Giulia Francesca Grassi takes up the important topic of Semitic onomastics in Greek and Latin inscriptions from Syria and Lebanon, by and large dating to the Roman Imperial period before the rise of Islam. It is methodologically similar to the author’s first book (Grassi 2012), though much wider in scope. Grassi’s book is the most extensive modern compilation of Semitic names in Greek and Latin inscriptions from the Roman Near East, a work of reference that will become indispensable for Roman epigraphers and historians of the Near East despite some methodological and philological limitations.
The book under review comprises three parts: a short introduction, a long list of Semitic names attested in the Greek and Latin inscriptions, then three indices. The volume collects the Semitic-looking names and provides mostly convincing Semitic etymologies.[1] Grassi’s book covers the inscriptions published in the series Inscriptions grecques et latine de la Syrie I–XI, XVII, containing most of Northern and Central Syria, including the important city of Palmyra, as well as the Tyrian inscriptions collected in Inscriptions grecques et latines de Tyr and Inscriptions grecques et latines de la nécropole de Tyr. (Most of these volumes have been digitized.) The towns of Southern Syria will be covered in a forthcoming volume in 2026–2027 (p. 5).
The introduction starts with a short plea to study onomastics from a social and cultural historical point of view. It is an important point, and the book does a splendid job of providing data for groundwork, even if actual social or cultural analysis is often lacking here. The book joins the burgeoning field of Semitic onomastics (recently especially evidenced by the meticulous work on Amorite by Streck, Golinetz, and others), and synthesizes onomastic data collected and analyzed in the past half century by specialists working on specific subcorpora of Aramaic(/Arabic) in Greco-Roman times (Grassi on Dura Europos, Sartre on Bostran, Negev on Nabatean, Stark on Palmyrene, Marcato on Hatran, Macdonald on Ancient North Arabian, among many others; for comparable works done on the earlier corpora of Aramaic names recorded in cuneiform, see especially works by Zadok on the Babylonian, and Fales on the Assyrian data). The intention to replace Wuthnow 1930 is, however, presently only partly successful, as none of the relevant papyrological data (especially of the Middle Euphrates archive and, though slightly off-field, the onomastically fascinating Petra archive), though numerous, have been taken into systematic consideration. The numerous curse tablets could also benefit from an onomastic treatment (like the ones collected in Daniel & Hollmann 2025). Moreover, the numerous Semitic names from Syria as recorded in Classical and Patristic sources also urgently await further research. All, hopefully, can be incorporated into an online database similar to one built by the author (cited below). The main body of the book is the 311 pages of attested Semitic names, listed alphabetically, first in Greek and then in Latin. Each name is provided with an etymological discussion and includes useful notes on comparable onomastic formations found elsewhere in Semitic, especially in other Aramaic and Arabic varieties. Oftentimes the proposed morphology makes sense, but the author regrettably does not dwell much on the phonological significance of the transcriptions (unlike, e.g., Beyer for the Palestinian texts). The lack of phonological detail is understandable for a work of so wide a scope that was finished in such a short amount of time (a three-year DFG fund). It would also be helpful to see more engagement with the current scholarships on Ancient North Arabian, especially if a name is identified as “Arabic” rather than “Aramaic.”
This imminently useful work will appeal to many different audiences. Its usefulness has been, and will continue to be, greatly enhanced by the ongoing online database set up by the author and their collaborators. Classicists will find this work useful in a host of ways: a historian can elaborate on the complex linguistic-onomastic makeup of Roman Syria by reading this diversity against the many recent social and cultural histories of the region, suggestive of the complex ethnic situation of the region. Editors of Greek inscriptions, papyri, and especially patristic sources will remain grateful for this long-needed compendium of Semitic names epigraphically attested in Greek transcriptions.
On the other hand, Semitists will be most grateful for the valuable data collected by the author from the many epigraphic corpora, often hard-to-access for those unfamiliar with Greek epigraphy. The most significant (if sometimes debatable) results have been summarized in the detailed indices. They deal with the theophoric elements in the names, the nontheophoric elements, the attested structures of the names (including compounds, under which Grassi includes both verbal and nominal “sentences”, and noncompounds); she rounds up the index with a useful list of noun formations (qal, qil, qatl, qitl, qutl, qatal, qatil, qital, qutal, qātil, qatāl, qitāl, qatīl, qatūl, qutāl, qutayl, qawtal, qātōl/qātūl, qittôl(<*quttul), qattāl, qattīl, qattūl, quttayl, qatlūl, qatlad, aqtal, aqtūl, aqawtal/aqūtal, maqtal, maqtil, muqattal/məqattal, muqattil/məqattel, muqtil, muqīl/maqīl, and the suffixes -ā, -ā/a, -t, -īt, -t-īn, -ān, -ay, -ī, -īn, -ōn, -ōs, -w, and the forms with enclitic pronouns; all these stem-form citations are based on Grassi’s own formulation). Moreover, the results obtained from this handy work can hopefully one day be incorporated into a much-needed dialect map of Northwest Semitic and/or Ancient North Arabian in the Roman period, incorporating useful, albeit fragmentary, data about vocalization that can hardly be gleaned from elsewhere. For instance, regarding the names of the type ʕbd + divine name (“servant of DN”), we see a diversity of forms (pp. 26–33):
ʕabdø (Palmyra (Αβδαλλαθος, Αβδαρσας), Laodicea (Αβδαλλας), Halat (Αβδουσιρις))
ʕabda (Palmyra (Αβδαασθωρης), Emesa (Αβδασαμσος)),
ʕabda+gemination (Beqa (Αβδαμμαλεχος)),
ʕabde (Apamea (Αβδεμαλιχος)),
ʕabduō (Tyre, sic, if we follow Grassi, see p. 31f. for Αβδυωκος),
ʕabed (Ḥermon (Αβεδανος), Apamea (Αβεδραψας))
It is not easy to draw conclusions from the orthography of this single lexeme, but we see some patterns: disregarding Palmyra, which may have its own norms, ʕabd-type endingless construct states dominate the northern cities, whereas in the central and southern cities many different strategies have been preserved (or (re)innovated) for it (epenthesis, or the preservation of a case vowel, etc.). Interestingly, in the Beqa valley, we seem to have evidence for the preservation of a Canaanite-type definite article with the characteristic gemination in Αβδ-αμ-μελεχος (Grassi’s argument that it is a “Arab. PN, ʕbdʔlmlk, mit regressiver Assimilation” is not quite felicitous as saying it is probably the common Ancient North Arabian h- or the ʔ- article, probably with an underlying nasal often assimilated to the following consonant like in Canaanite (Al-Jallad 2015: 74ff.). I would prefer to see Canaanite influence here, due to the long-standing tradition of Canaanite speakers in the valley. Whatever the case, we see the potential for synthesizing Grassi’s valuable data into a more comprehensive study of Semitic dialect geography of the region, following works such as Garr 1985. Needless to say, the project requires a much more systematic criterion for distinguishing the various Northwest Semitic and Ancient North Arabian elements when we encounter them with (!) vowels.
In summary, the author is to be congratulated for this invaluable collection and analysis of Semitic names from the Greek and Latin inscriptions of Syria. It presents useful data to aramaicists, arabists and semiticists who might not be familiar with Greek epigraphy, and to classicists who might not be versed in comparative semitics. I hope that the author and their team can keep collecting and analyzing these fascinating onomastic data from the Greco-Roman Near East, and further expand the project to include data from papyri, curse tablets, and literary sources, both Classical and Christian. Such a work will lay foundations for a long-desired survey of Roman Aramaic regarding its sound system and morphophonology, as well as providing a fascinating window into the interplay between the rise and fall of new religions and empires, as well as the persistence of ancient (not just onomastic) traditions.
A full evaluation of Grassi’s data does not belong here due to the exigency of space. By way of an example, I only list my comments on the first two pages of the philological section. Of course, for a work of such a scope, individual readers can always come up with quibbles regarding the minute philological analysis. Such quibbles should not detract the work’s value in any way:
Ααιλαμεις (p. 20f.): Grassi claims that “Stark interpretiert den Namen als ʔaqtal-Form aus ʕlm, ein Diminutiv des PN Aʕlam (Stark 1971: 6, 71)”, and disputes that “[w]egen der Vokalisierung ʔʕylmy/Ααιλαμεις ist eine ʔaqtal-Form unwahrscheinlich”. However, this is not quite what Stark has “interpreted.” Stark interprets, in fact, “[d]iminutive of the Afʕal form. […] uḥaimir, alʔuʕaisir” (Stark 1971: 71), clearly taking the word as ʔuqaytil, not all that much more unlikely than the author’s own qaytal plus the mysterious “Diminutiv mit Präfix ʔ-” (p. 20).
Ααιλαμις (p. 21): there is no point of citing this ghost word, purely a conjecture suggested by Clermont-Ganneau long ago in a footnote merely as an example of a name ending with -μις (Clermont-Ganneau 1897: 45).
Ααφγαθεις (p. 21f.): Grassi reads a suffix conjugation verb ʔʕp and the well-known goddess Athe. Grassi’s note “das Verb ist M wie immer mit ʕAthe im Palm.” sounds plausible, but is regrettably not supported by Grassi through any parallels or citation. The traditional explanation for the masculine verbal element in names like bltyḥn is that “[t]he verbal form of a sentence name tends to agree with the gender of the namebearer even though the subject of the verbal sentence is a female deity” (Stark 1971: 77, citing Northwest Semitic parallels in Amorite, Phoenician, and Hebrew). Upon checking Grassi’s index (p. 335) for Athe among the “theophore Elemente,” the names either follow this general NWS trend (Αθηακαβος), or do not contain a verbal element (Ζαβδααθης), and/or, more oddly, do not figure in the book under review at all (Σαλαμαγαθης, Salamagatis).
Bibliography
Al-Jallad, A. (2015). An Outline of the Grammar of the Safaitic Inscriptions. Leiden.
Clermont-Ganneau, C. (1897). Études d’archéologie orientale II. Paris.
Daniel, R., & A. Hollmann. (2025). Magica Levantina (Mag.Lev.). Leiden.
Garr, R. (1985). Dialect Geography of Syria-Palestine: 1000–586 B.C.E. Philadelphia.
Grassi, G. F. (2012). Semitic Onomastics from Dura Europos. The Names in the Greek Script and from Latin Epigraphs. Padua.
Stark, J. (1971). Personal Names in Palmyrene Inscriptions. Oxford.
Wuthnow, H. (1930). Die semitischen Menschennamen in griechischen Inschriften und Papyri des vorderen Orients. Leipzig.
Notes
[1] Understandably, the compound names and the Judeo-Christian names tend to be etymologically clearer, as well as the (Palmyrene) inscriptions which offer the consonantal skeletons in the local Aramaic script.