Indo-European Naming Customs

The **naming customs of the Indo-Europeans** include reflect the values of the culture, namely involving fame, the guest/host relationship, gods, battles/strength, and leadership. They are composed of compound words. Naming children in modern society is taken very seriously, but a personal name does not have the same weight as it did long before our current names existed. Indo-European culture placed a large emphasis on fame and the deeds that brought fame. Naming a child was not just about selecting a series of arbitrary sounds that could be associated with each individual, it was about cementing the future reputation of the child.

The naming process of the Indo-European culture was almost ritualistic in nature. There is evidence for very similar rituals in multiple cultures. After the child was born, the parents would wait approximately 9 days during in which time the mother could recover from childbirth. After the 9 day resting period, the mother was bathed and the child was given a name. This process, or a similar one, is repeated in Indian, Greek, Roman, and Germanic cultures, leading us to believe that the practice was a descendent from the parent of them all, Proto-Indo-European (PIE).

## Importance

Why was naming so important that the process became sacred? The ultimate goal of an IE individual, particularly an individual from the more priveleged classes, was to become a legend. The poet was one of the most important roles in the society; It was his job to make sure that heroes and their deeds were well known throughout the civilization. More than that, it was important
 that stories of their successes continued to be told long after they were gone. In fact, the words for “fame” and “name” are related, sometimes even synonymous, in several daughter languages of IE. Vital to the success of these epics was a powerful name. An epic tale about a man named “Weak in battle” might not bode well for the poet, or for “Weak in battle” himself.

## Examples

The use of two-word compounds for personal names was common in PIE; as, **Suḱléwos**, "of good fame", with cognates found in poetic diction, cf. Gk. Eukleḗs, and Skt. Suśráva-, or Illyr. Vescleves-. These names are called a dithematic compound (fame + warrior). The name of the father would sometimes be broken apart to create a name for the son, similarly to the naming practices of race horses in modern culture. A father named *Dinoklē̃s* (fear + strength) in Greek might name his son *Dinokrátēs* (fear + fame). You can imagine that after splitting the names of the men of a society for so long, the names might begin to sound like
nonsense. While many personal names from the English language among other Indo-European languages can be traced directly back to PIE, there are also cases in which the words themselves were passed on to daughter languages, and then the names were developed.

The units that make up these names tell us a great deal about PIE culture. What was important to the people?
What did they want to achieve? Like many daughter cultures, the proto-culture was hierarchical, with royalty, religious figures, and warriors in the upper classes. Many great epics are known about the
feats of kings and warriors. The hero of the story typically interacts with the gods in some way. The hero is a brave man who must defeat a force of evil using strength and cunning. Names such as Greek *Diogénēs*, “born of Zeus,” Old High German *Hlúdwīg* (later Ludwig), “loud in battle,” and Old Persian *Xšayāršā* (Xerxes), “ruling over men”, display these cultural characteristics
manifested in a name. Another valued component of the proto-culture was the guest-host relationship. This practice has been lost to some degree
in North American culture, but was of vital importance in PIE culture. You may recall that according to Homer in the Iliad, the Trojan War was the product of a violation of xenia, the Greek word for this concept of
the guest-host relationship. Greek literature is full of references to hospitality, indicating to us its importance and severity. Names from several IE branches include references to guests (Runic Germanic *Hlewa-gastiz*, “Fame-guest”). Strength, another staple in the name repertoire, is still highly valued in the modern world. Warriors were respected as upper members of IE society, and names with elements such as ‘battle’ (***Hil-**da*), ‘glory’ (*Hera-**kles***), or even ‘spear’ (***Ger-**ald*) were common.

* Albert: Old High German *Adalbert*
	+ *Adal*: noble (< Proto-Germanic *\*athal-*; cf. German *Edel-weiss*)
	+ *Beraht*: bright (From PIE *\*bhrāǵyeti*; cf. Sanskrit *bhrā́jate*‘shines’)

* Ludwig: Germanic *Hludwig*
	+ *Hlud*: fame (< PIE *\*ḱlutós ‘*that which is heard’; cf. English *loud*)
	+ *Wig*: warrior (< Proto-Germanic *\*wig-*; cf. Old English *wiga*‘warrior’)

* Fergus: Gaelic *Fearghus*
	+ Gaelic *fear*: man (< PIE *\*wīrós*‘man, hero; cf. English *were-wolf*‘man-wolf’, *vir-ile*‘manly’)
	+ Gaelic *gus*: vigour (< PIE *\*geustum* “to taste”; cf. English *choose*)

Other area in which it is suspected the retention of ancient Proto-Indo-European personal names is the use of animal names or numerals, composed of one stem; as **Wḷqos**, "wolf", cf. O.Ir. Olc, O.Eng. Wulf, Gk. Lukos, Skt. Vŕka; or, **Qétwṛtos**, "fourth", cf. Lat. Quārta, Lith. Keturai, Russ. Četvertoj, Gk. Tetartíōn. When considering the giving of names to individuals, one departs generally from the basis of the free men. Whereas the man is addressed using the individual name, a simple ‘oh woman’ suffices in the case of woman. “The woman is treated more as a typus, the man as an individual”. Wackernagel (1969) makes clear that the same forms of address were adopted for interactions with the gods.

According to Meier-Brügger (2003), to say that the Indo-Europeans were not very different from the Romans and Greeks would not likely be too far from the mark. In Rome, women generally carried only the nomen gentile, cf. Cornelia, Julia, etc. In the case of the Greeks, most names of women are simply feminine forms of masculine names of individuals, e.g. Myc. a-re-ka-sa-da-ra, i.e Aleksandrā (corresponding to Aleks-anōr ‘who fights off men’), Hom. Andromákhē, from Andrómakhos ‘who fights with men’, etc.

## References

http://blog.as.uky.edu/thebhlog/?p=144 "Heroes get remembered, but legends never die" Proto-Indo-European Naming Practices (2014)

A Grammar of Modern Indo-European: Third Edition, "Names of Persons" pages 348-349. (2011)