Personal Names in Ancient Anatolia

Ancient Anatolia was a region where many peoples mingled: Persians, Greeks, Gauls, Romans, Jews. Its rich and complex history of cultural interaction is only spasmodically illuminated by literary sources. Inscriptions, by contrast, abound and attest well over 100,000 name-bearing inhabitants. This volume exploits the huge possibilities for social and linguistic history being created by the expansion of The Lexicon of Greek Personal Names into Anatolia. One topic is that of continuities and discontinuities between the naming practices of the Hittites and Luvians in the second millennium BC and those of the Greco-Roman period. Several studies trace changing patterns of naming in particular regions. The Anatolian treasure house of names can also be used to illuminate the psychology of naming. The volume shows how the study of names is a 'paradigm case of the convergence of disciplines, where the history of language meets social history'.