The names of exalted personages, like kings, were often com- pounded of divine names. Most of the names of the Eji.vptian kings have incorporated in them the names of Ea, Amon.etcli^i^ The gre.it majority of Mesopotamian names contain the n-ime of a god, the greater number containing two, some three, such elements, as Sin-kalama-idi, meaning 'Sin knows every- thing.' "•** Among the South Arabians, as among the Mina-ans and SabtBans, a great many of the personal names are compounds of iltt, the generic name for ' God.' tttt A Min:ean inscription of the Ptolemaic period gives us the name Snti (Zaid-El) ; in 1 Mac 1117 we have the name Za^5tijA as that of an Arabian chief, while Nabatiean inscriptions of the age of Jesus have many such names. tut 'In pre-lslamitic inscriptions of Arabia,' we have such names as ' Ili-kariba, " My God hath blessed " ' ; wiiich ' served as spells for the protection of the child ' who bore them.§§§§ A great number of personal names in the OT are
* ERE i. 497. t Ac 18=.
J Ezr ew, Ac 112s ; ExpT Ix. [1897-98] 567.
§ Ac HM ; HDB i. 645.
II Ac 936 ; G. A. Deissmann, Bible Studies, 1901, p. 189.
1 Ac 12rJ. *• Ac 46, etc.
ttRol68. t{Ph2-.!5.
S§ Ac 1". ■ mi Ro 1613.
fl!IAo25I». **• Philem 10. tf t 2 Ti 19 419.
ttl Ac 131 ; Deissmann, op. cit. p. 310.
§$§ Rev 127 ; T. K. Cheyne speaks of Michael as 'a degraded (but an honourably degraded) deity,' ' a reflexion, not only of Mithra. but of Marduk," as the repository of the Name of God — ' one might sav that he is the Name of God ' (Exp, 7tb ser., i. [19061 2;)9 ; ExpT xvi. [1904-05] 147, 193, 2S7).
II II II Lklis.
^HH A. Ennan, Life in Ancient Egyytt. 1894, p. 56.
•••• F. Hommel, Ancient Ht'brew Tradition, 1S97, pp. 60- 72 ; L. R- Farnell, Greece and Babi/lon, 1911. p. 195.
tttt Hommel, p. SO. ttl! Critical Review, vii. (ISO"] 413.
§§§§ Farnell, op. cit. p. 195. VOL. 11. — 5
compounded of Jahweh, El, or Pnal. This custom, a Bvirvival from animism, was not intended to serve as a protection to the Divine n»nie, which might not be uttered : the eiilwiniiig of the name of the deity in the luunan name meant the enlisting of the power of the god on behalf of the man.' In such theo- morphous names, the predicate is sometimes a verb and sorne- linies a noun ; the subject may bo at the beginning as [0J7K, or at the end aa Na^ai-ajjA-t This custom is closely akin to the Hebrew one of 'calling the nome over.' solemnly invoking the name of a ]icrson. Divine or human, over a person or place, and thus linking them in the closest possible connexion, t
The records of the Apostolic Church furnish us with several such names, as 'AxoWas (Ananias),§ the Gr. form of the Heb. n.-^jq ('Jahweh hath been gracious'); MaT^aTos (Matthias), || an abbreviation of MaTTaOias, the Gr. form of n;nnD ('gift of Jalnveh ') ; ro^aXiiiX (Ganialiel),1[ the Heb. form of which, Sn'Vp^ means ' reward of tiod." Bapfd^as (Uarnabas),** formerly taken as the Greek form of .ixnp;, is in reality a form of a recently discovered Semitic name, Bapvejion, and is i3r^3 ('son of Nebo'). Demetrius is another imstance of the same thing. tt It was not uncommon to brand or tatu the name of the deity on the person by whose name he was called. It is po.ssible tliat St. I'anl was alluding to some such mark on himself when he speaks of bearing ' branded on my body the marks of Jesus, 'JJ and the custom is clearly alluded to in the Apoca- lypse in the marking of tlie adherents of the ISeast with his name or the number of his name,§§ and the marking of his opponents with the seal of the living God.llll In Greece we have clear traces, in such names as ApoUodorus, Zeno, and Diogenes, of the incorporation of a divine name in :i liuman one.
As the members of communities increased and nations grew larger, necessity demanded that in- dividuals bearing the same name should be ditler- entiated one from another. This was done as a rule by making an addition to the original name. This addition might be the name of the father, the name of some place with which the individual was specially connected, or another name in some cases in a ditterent language. All these cases are dealt with in the art. SURNAME.
Names, like other words, were, in course of general use, subject to slight alterations, the most important of which may be classed under —
{a} Abbreviations and diminutive,^. — A number of these occur in the apostolic writings ; thus Apollonius is shortened into Apollos (Ac IS'-^) ; Anipliatus into Amplias (Ko 16'); Demetrius into Demas (Ac 19«, 3 Jn'^, 2 Ti 4'", etc.); Epaphro- ditus into Epajthras (Ph 2-^ etc., Col 4'-, etc.); Hermogenes (like Hermagoras and Heniiodorus) into Hernias (Ro 16'*, 2 Tl l'^ and the author of the Pastor) ; Lucanus into Lucas (Philem -■', etc.) ; Lucius into Lucullus (Ac 13', Ro 16-') ; Silvanus into Silas (Ac 15-"-, etc., 2 Co 1'", etc.) ; 01ym)iio- dorus into Olympas (Ro 16"') ; Priscainto Priscilla (Ac 18^, Ro 16', etc.); Parmenides into Parnienas (Ac 6=); Tertius into Tertullus (Ac 24=, Ro 16-'-); TheodorusintoTlieudas (Ac ,5'") ; and, if Nym|ihas be the correct reading of Col 4"', it is probably a contraction of Nymphodoru-s.