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Nombres de persona en griego antiguo /
Ancient Greek Personal Names
We have collected here a simple list of Ancient Greek Personal names. It contains 76,843 different
personal names (or variants thereof) coming from two main sources: The Lexicon of Greek Personal Names,
and the Trismegistos repository of papyrological & epigraphic resources (all names come from papyri).
An additional bunch of +4,000 names, mostly from literary sources, comes from unsystematic queries on different lexica, as they were
collected by the Logeion project.
The list is intended as a tool for (mainly) linguistic projects. It provides only two kinds
of additional information: whether the bearer of the name was identified as a male or a female (“fem”),
and the source of the data (see the list of sources). The source of the data generally allows the user
to identify the geographical region where the names are attested, except when the source is identified as “Dictionaries”. Far
more precise information about geographical attestation of the data is provided at the websites of the LGPN and the Trismegistos projects.
Caveats:
The tag for “male” and “female” of the name bearer is only checked (by the editors) for the
data coming from
LGPN (if you check the
Trismegistos site you can find this information for
the data coming from
TM as well: As I couldn't extract the data on the sex of the bearer of the names from the TM server, I wrote
a script that inferes the sex of the bearer depending on the name endings, based on the
LGPN data.)
Another caveat: As you will soon find, there are not really so many different personal names in this list. Sure, there are so many
entries, but a number of them are variants of the same name and, more importantly, in many cases two entries can sensibly
be joined into one (see e.g. Ἰάζημις (male) in LGPN 1 vs. Ἰαζημις (male) in TM).
Names ascribed to one sex in one source
and the other (or none) in another source are kept differentiated (see e.g. Οα (fem) in LGPN 1 vs. Οα (NULL) in TM).
Sometimes, the editor of a text can't tell whether a name on a papyrus or an inscription was written in full, or in abbreviation.
You may think this is a list of names of Greek people, and not a list of Greek Names of people, and you may very well be
right. But, then again, when did “Homer” became a Greek name?
This list is going to experiment changes as we correct mistakes, simplify variants and introduce more items from Lexica.
If only somebody would make available a digital edition of Wilhelm Pape and Gustav E. Benseler 1884
Wörterbuch der griechischen Eigennamen!
Thanks: to Silvia for great ideas about how to handle the data and how to use it.
List of Sources:
PERSONAL NAME ENDINGS
(only endings of 7 or less letters, appearing in two or more names.)
Names (by number of examples) ending with:
Names (in alphabetical order) ending with:
Some trivia:
There are 62,509 only-male names in our sample: 12,686 only-female names; 205 mostly-male names; 236 mostly-female names; for the rest
of the names, the sex of the bearer was not certain.
The 20 most frequently attested names in Greece, or rather the Greek World (according to LGPN and TM) are: Διονύσιος, Ἀπολλώνιος, Δημήτριος, Ἀλέξανδρος, Ἀρτεμίδωρος, Ἀπολλόδωρος, Ἀσκληπιάδης,
Ζώσιμος, Φίλων, Θεόδωρος, Μένανδρος, ῾Ηρακλείδης, Ἀρίστων, Διογένης, Φίλιππος, Μητρόδωρος, Διόδωρος, Μενεκράτης, Νικίας, Λέων (All of them
for males!).
The top 20 personal names for women are: Ζωσίμη, Στρατονίκη, Νίκη, Ἀφροδισία, Δημητρία, Ἀρτεμισία, Κλεοπάτρα, Διονυσία, Τύχη, Εὐτυχία, Εἰρήνη, Ἀμμία,
Ἀπολλωνία, Ἰουλία, Ἀθηναΐς, Φίλα, ῎Αμμιον, Εὐφροσύνη, Ἐπίκτησις, Ὀλυμπιάς.
The 37 names used for either sex with a ratio > 2 for the less represented sex are: Ἀρχέπολις, Δᾶμις, ῾Αγησίπολις, Πρᾶξις, Ἀριστόπολις, Πῦθις,
Σάγαρις, Δαμόχαρις, Λίβυς, Σωσίπολις, Νύμφις, Κάρνις, Εὔπολις, Μνῆσις, ῾Ηγησίπολις, Στᾶσις, Κλεόπολις, ῎Εξακις, Μῦς, Εὖφρις,
Κάλλις, Νεόπολις, Σῶσις, Φανόπολις, Κτῆσις, Κῦδις, Μάνδρις, Δημόνους, Νίκασις, ῞Υρατθις, Δαχις, ῏Αγις, Πρύτανις, Σώπολις, Εὔπλους, Ἀπφοῦς,
῎Ολυμπις.
No name in our corpus is longer than 16 characters: Ἀγαθοδωρόστρατος, Ἀσκληπιοδοτιανός, Μενεδημερούμενος, Οἰκοδεσποινιανός,
Πλεισταριστιανός.
Names 15 characters long are the following: ῾Ελλησποντιανός, Ἀριστομβροτίδας, Διωνιουσιόδωρος, Ἰουκουνδίσσιμος, Κλεισιμβροτίδας, Κωνσταντινιανός,
Οὐαλεντιλλιανός, Πολιουμναστίδας.
You can put 76,843 personal names on a single document that fits comfortably in a 1997 flash drive, but it takes a building the size of
a full modern football stadium to hold the same amount of real people, and no ancient building was ever that big. Now, can you really
believe that?
Some more trivia:
Names related with Σωκράτης: male Σωκράτεις, Σωκρατιαίνα, Σωκρατιανός, Σωκρατίδας, Σωκρατίδης, Σωκρατικός, Σωκρατῖνος, Σωκρατίων, Σωκράτων;
female: Σωκράτα, Σωκράτεα, Σωκρατέα, Σωκράτεια, Σωκράτιον, Σωκρατίς, Σωκράτις, Σωκρατική, Σωκράτια, Σωκρατία, Σωκράτη
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Esta base de datos y las utilidades para desarrollarlo son parte de los proyectos de I+D+i FFI2017-89110-P y PGC2018-096171-B-C21 financiados por MCIN/ AEI/10.13039/501100011033/
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This database and the code used to create & publish it are supported by projects FFI2017-89110-P and PGC2018-096171-B-C21 from Spain's
Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades.