CHAPTER I.
NAMES PROM THE GREEK.
Passing from Persian to Greek names, we feel at once that we are nearer home, and that we claim a nearer kindred in thoughts and habits, if not in blood, with the sons of Javan, than with the fire-worshippers. The national names are thus almost always explicable by the language itself, with a few exceptions, either when the name was an importation from Egypt or Phœnicia, whence many of the earlier arts had been brought.
Each Greek had but one name, which was given to him by his father either on or before the tenth day of his life, when a sacrifice and banquet was held. Genealogies were exceedingly interesting to the Greeks, as the mutual connection of city with city, race with race, was thus kept up, and community of ancestry was regarded as a bond of alliance, attaching the Athenians, for instance, to the Asiatic Ionians as both sons of Ion, or the Spartans to the Syracusans, as likewise descended from Doros. Each individual state had its deified ancestor, and each family of note a hero parent, to whom worship was offered at every feast, and who was supposed still to exert active protection over his votaries. The political rights of the citizens, and the place they occupied in the army, depended on their power of tracing their line from the forefather of a recognized tribe, after whose name the whole were termed with the patronymic termination ides (the son of). This was only, however, a distinction, for surnames were unknown, and each man possessed merely the individual personal appellation by which he was always called, without any title, be his station what it might. Families used, however, to mark themselves by recurring constantly to the same name. It was the correct thing to give the eldest son that of his paternal grandfather, as Kimon, Miltiades, then Kimon again, if the old man were dead, for if he were living it would have been putting another in his place, a bad omen, and therefore a father’s name was hardly ever given to a son. Sometimes, however, the prefix was preserved, and the termination varied, so as to mark the family without destroying the individual identity. Thus, Leonidas, the third son of Anaxandridas, repeated with an augmentative his grandfather’s name of Leo (a lion), as his father, Anaxandridas, did that of his own great grandfather, Anaxandras (king of man), whose son Eurycratidas was named from his grandfather Eurycrates. A like custom prevailed among the old English.
After the Romans had subdued Greece and extended the powers of becoming citizens, the name of the adopting patron would be taken by his client, and thus Latin and Greek titles became mixed together. Later, Greek second names became coined, either from patronymics, places, or events, and finally ran into the ordinary European system of surnames.
Among the names here ensuing will only be found those that concern the history of Christian names. Many a great heart-thrilling sound connected with the brightest lights of the ancient world must be passed by, because it has not pleased the capricious will of after-generations to perpetuate it, or so exceptionally as not to be worth mentioning.
Some of the female Greek names were appropriate words and epithets; but others, perhaps the greater number, were merely men’s names with the feminine termination in a or e, often irrespective of their meaning. Some of these have entirely perished from the lips of men, others have been revived by some enterprising writer in search of a fresh title for a heroine. Such is Corinna (probably from Persephone’s title Κόρη (Koré), a maiden)[maiden)], the Bœotian poetess, who won a wreath of victory at Thebes, and was therefore the example from whom Mdme. de Staël named her brilliant Corinne, followed in her turn by numerous French damsels; and in an Italian chronicle of the early middle ages, the lady whom we have been used to call Rowena, daughter of Henghist, has turned into Corinna; whilst Cora, probably through Lord Byron’s poem, is a favourite in America. Such too is Aspasia (welcome), from the literary fame of its first owner chosen by the taste of the seventeenth century as the title under which to praise the virtues of Lady Elizabeth Hastings. In the Rambler and Spectator days, real or fictitious characters were usually introduced under some classical or pastoral appellation, and ladies corresponded with each other under the soubriquets of nymph, goddess, or heroine, and in virtue of its sound Aspasia was adopted among these. It has even been heard as a Christian name in a cottage. “Her name’s Aspasia, but us calls her Spash.”[[24]]
[23]. Rawlinson, Herodotus; Malcolm, Persia; Le Beau, Bas Empire; Rollin, Ancient History; Butler, Lives of the Saints; Dunlop, History of Fiction.
[24]. Bishop Thirlwall, Greece; Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities; Lappenberg, Anglo-Saxons.