[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review.]
This is a book about names, and naming practices, in the ancient Mediterranean. It divides the selected studies of its title across 17 chapters, in English, Italian, and Spanish, with a combined thematic and geographic structure: the Aegean; Italy; a “wider” but still largely European “Roman world”; “name and identity” in Roman Iberia and the provinces of south-east Europe.
The introduction by Cristina de la Escosura Balbás presents approaches to using names to reconstruct identity. She begins with the complexities of modern Spanish onomastics to illustrate the multiple facets (ethnic, legal, professional, socio-economic) of identity as a prelude to those considered in the volume, a “constant give and take between self and other” (2), but concedes that ancient people “were not always aware the range of identities they were displaying” (1). This discussion of Spanish naming practices is a rare engagement with the modern in this heavily philological volume, nor is the application of sociological and anthropological theory on name-giving much in evidence, which is not to say that the volume avoids theory entirely; the approach of Anna Chiara Bassan’s chapter to ancient Italy, for example, is informed by sociolinguistics. The introductory account of methodology by de la Escosura Balbás places importance on context, extending past the fortunes of archaeological survival to larger historical forces: onomastic invisibility, for example, arises not only through chance, but also economic and political crises, loss of wealth, and migration. Throughout the book, there is a focus on how names are chosen and changed: for example, a correlation of name and status change, as with new citizenship, or changing onomastic fashions with the spread of societal changes, as under Romanization. Epigraphic evidence is fundamental, and in a recurring emphasis on interaction among Roman and indigenous onomastics, usually entailing the displacement of the latter, inscriptions are precious witnesses to naming practices now variously submerged.
The “Aegean” section amounts to Lycia and Athens. Florian Réveilhac considers a Lycian onomastic type, the Satznamen or “personal names formed through the univerbation of at least one phrase” (9), probably modeled on naming practices of the Near East. The chapter consists of a commented catalogue of epigraphic evidence for two Satznamen patterns whose etymology is reconstructed from Greek transcriptions. A “play on names” is proposed in a father-son pair Megistodotos-Ornepeimis, which may be semantically equivalent. The type is not productive in Roman times, which Réveilhac connects with the late Hellenistic obsolescence of spoken Lycian. Elena Duce Pastor considers an extension of an ideal of feminine silence for the citizens of Classical Athens, observed in forensic oratory, onto “the invisibility of female names in public events as a symbol of respect” (21). Here the epigraphic evidence is the exception, as funerary inscriptions name women once social life is ended. Parts of the argument rest on relatively scarce literary evidence: Myrrhina’s name in Lysistrata and its later application to the wife of Peisistratus are central. Aristotle himself, whose omission of the name of Megacles’ daughter (Ath. pol. 14.4) is central to this discussion, was distanced from Athens for significant parts of his life: how representative is he, and is his silence respectful rather than dismissive? I am also reluctant to dismiss the epigraphic presence of women’s names in religious contexts: the communication is addressed to gods, but it is also exposed to the human gaze.
The contributions on Italy and Rome’s European provinces are similarly heavy on epigraphy. Onomastic change and choice are variously highlighted by Anna Chiara Bassan, an ethno- and socio-linguistic study on “binomial” onomastics, or the rise of a “patronimico istituzionale” as precursor to the Roman gentilic in public contexts, and Tuomo Nuorluoto, on new Roman cognomina and their motivation by semantic associations with, or more direct calques of, an existing name. These inventions attest semantic awareness on the part of name-giving parents is in alignment with “categorical meaning,” as in three generations of bearers of river-names (Rhenus; Euphrates; Crescens, Rhenus, and Danuvius).[1] Two chapters focus on indigenous, primarily Celtic onomastics of northern Italy: Brescia for Claudia Ciancaglini and Gian Luci Gregori, and the wider region for Alexander Falileyev, a preparatory phase of linguistic analysis for “surveying identities” (51). Alberto Barrón Ruiz de la Cuestra traces onomastic evidence for the juridical status of the seviri Augustales, amassing statistics to show a greater representation of liberti than ingenui in the provinces compared to Italy. Literature is the focus of Giuseppe Eugenio Rallo, who distinguishes the fabulae togatae from the palliatae in Republican drama as reflecting “real” Roman onomastics.[2] A standout in this section is the chapter of Dan Dana, who applies the record of Roman military diplomas—each recording up to three generations and indications of both birthplace and later residence—to trace and contrast changes in naming practices across provinces. This rich evidence is largely untapped for the study of name-giving, and Dana’s commented catalogue of family name-groups reflects judiciously on potential motivations for name choice, “des bribes d’histoires de vie de tant de provinciaux à l’échelle de l’Empire” (77).
The Iberian section continues the focus on indigenous, pre-Roman naming, with Anthony Álvarez Melero’s reconstruction of a stratum of names derived, by comparison again to Celtic languages, from nouns for equids (which prove sparse, the best documented, mandu-/manu– “draft-horse,” also having, as Álvarez Melero acknowledges, another meaning unrelated to equids), and Juan Manuel Abascal’s study of a “generación perdida,” people attested only as patronyms in epigraphy, whose indigenous names are captured by the arrival of the epigraphic habit but soon to vanish with Romanization. Javier Herrera Rando considers change under similar circumstances but focuses on the complexities of causation: “‘early Romanization’ as a constantly changing dialectal relationship” (109) with scope for local aemulatio through names and cultural translation. Estela García García Fernández turns to the identification of “la población latina” through onomastics: holders of ius Latii, a promoted method of integration, are hiding in plain sight, onomastically assimilated to Roman citizens.
The final section covers Roman south-east Europe. Rada Varga considers the epigraphic presence of the ala I Batavorum stationed in Dacia, which proves complex: the soldiers’ names show little debt to the homeland of the Batavi, but rather reflect local recruitment in Illyrian names or acculturation in Roman names, though cult (of Hercules Magusanus) and culture (imported ceramics) establish a continued connection to the Lower Rhine. Dragana Nikolić tracks the displaced Delmatae through the characteristic names that traveled north-east with them, as the Romans put them to work in inland mines in Dacia and Upper Moesia. Ivan Radman-Livaja considers the dossier of over 900 people attested on lead tags from Pannonian Siscia, probably clients of local fullers and dyers to whose cloth goods the tags were attached. Catalogues of the relevant names (with accompanying linguistic commentary) show a strikingly low representation, less than 10%, of “Illyrian” names, Radman-Livaja’s placeholder for a complex linguistic situation, as the “Delmato-Pannonian” stratum is most relevant for this site, but other Illyrian linguistic regions and neighboring Venetic may also be reflected there. Siscia is also one of three foci of Julijana Visočnik’s chapter (translated by Maja Sužnik), who compares two other towns in a Celtic cultural area, Emona at the north-east border of Italia and Celeia in Noricum. Besides unsurprisingly better representation of indigenous names in rural as opposed to urban areas, the towns themselves can be distinguished in the linguistic complexity of indigenous elements,[3] the least number in inland Celeia and greater in Emona and Siscia, where north Adriatic, Pannonian, and Dalmatian elements are identified. Siscia’s lead tags again receive special emphasis, which come closer to a representative selection of the populace and include a significantly higher proportion of indigenous names, but the implied equation to ethnicity, implied in “autochthonous people also represented a frequent part of town population” (188), requires caution.
The volume closes with onomastic, geographic, and source indices. Tellingly for its orientation, inscriptions claim four pages to just over one for literary sources and papyrological materials are absent. A testament to the richness of detail is the total of well over 1500 names in the onomastic index.
Except for the two “Aegean” chapters—spotlights on Lycia and Athens that reach back to Classical and Hellenistic times—this is a volume on naming in the Roman world or its European provinces. Late Antiquity is also outside the scope. Readers will agree that the introductory promise of “a trip through the ancient Mediterranean, through time and cultures” (4) is fulfilled, and valuable results are presented throughout. Some may hope, however, for a more even distribution of both time and culture to match the title’s claim to comprise “Name and Identity.” Even in a mostly Roman imperial frame, the East deserves better representation: the potential is suggested, for example, by recent volumes on onomastics and history in the eastern Mediterranean, and the Levant and Egypt in particular.[4]
Authors and Titles
Cristina de la Escosura Balbás, “Name and Identity in Antiquity: An Introduction”
Florian Réveilhac, “Satznamen in Lycian Personal Names: Relics of a Local Morphological Type”
Elena Duce Pastor, “Don’t Call Me by My Name: Respect and Invisibility in Women’s Names in Athens”
Anna Chiara Bassan, “L’Identità (ri)costruita: Formule sistemiche e non-sistemiche nell’Italia pre-latina”
Claudia A. Ciancaglini and Gian Luca Gregori, “Nomi di dei e nomi di uomini: Tradizioni onomastiche epicoriche nell’epigrafia latina delle valli bresciane”
Alexander Falileyev, “Identities and Interpretations: Some Disputed Names in Inscriptions of Northern Italy”
Giuseppe Eugenio Rallo, “Nomen – Omen: The Togata, Its Anthroponymy and the Epigraphic Evidence”
Alberto Barrón Ruiz de la Cuesta, “Measuring the Juridical Status of the Seviri Augustales According to the Onomastics”
Dan Dana, “La transmission des noms aux enfants de soldats au miroir des diplômes militaires”
Tuomo Nuorluoto, “Roman Cognomina Chosen through Calque and Semantic Association”
Juan Manuel Abascal, “Los nombres de la generación perdida en la Hispania romana”
Javier Herrera Rando, “Integration and Latinization: Some Remarks on the Anthroponymy of Southern Hispania”
Estela García Fernández, “‘Where’re the Latins?’ Algunos problemas sobre la identificación onomástica de la población latina en época imperial. El caso de la provincia Bética”
Anthony Álvarez Melero, “Theriophoric Anthroponyms from the Iberian Peninsula in Roman Times: The Example of Names Derived from Zoonyms Referring to Equids”
Rada Varga, “The Batavians of Roman Dacia: Between Ethnic and Cultural Identity”
Dragana Nikolić, “Native Anthroponymy and Forced Displacements: A Look at Some Ethnically Mixed Communities in the Danubian Provinces of the Roman Empire”
Ivan Radman-Livaja, “An Overview of ‘Illyrian’ Onomastics on Lead Tags from Siscia”
Julijana Visočnik, “The Comparison of Inhabitants in Three Roman Towns: Emona, Celeia, and Siscia. So Close, yet Still So Far”
Notes
[1] Some of the “clear evidence” for relations of assonance in addition to semantic connections that Nuorluoto finds lacking (95) might be supplied by the work of Maurice Sartre (“The Ambiguous Name: The Limitations of Cultural Identity in Graeco-Roman Syrian Onomastics,” in Elaine Matthews [ed.], Old and New Worlds in Greek Onomastics [Oxford, 2007] 199–232) and Jean-Baptiste Yon (L’histoire par les noms: Histoire et onomastique, de la Palmyrène à la Haute Mésopotamie romaines [Beirut, 2018]) on the Near East; see also the chapter of Dan Dana in this volume (89) with further references.
[2] Pseudolus, rather than being “rooted in Greek pseudos … and lous (implying someone who is freeing or loosing)” (59)—still less if the spelling Pseudylus advocated by Michael Fontaine is accepted (Funny Words in Plautine Comedy [Oxford, 2010], 30–33), which Rallo does not consider—is more likely a transcription of a Greek diminutive or deteriorative formation from ψεῦδος (cf., e.g., φειδωλός and Φειδύλος), “little fraudster.”
[3] I cannot agree with the analysis of Phoetaspus as “of Greek origin” (185).
[4] Robert Parker (ed.), Changing Names: Tradition and Innovation in Ancient Greek Onomastics (Oxford, 2019); Jean-Baptiste Yon, L’histoire (n. 1 above); Yanne Broux, Double Names and Elite Strategy in Roman Egypt (Leuven, 2015).