ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 2654 http://www.s-gabriel.org/2654 ************************************ 14 May 2003 From: Josh Mittleman Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked whether is an appropriate name for a 5th century Greek woman; and if not, whether we can suggest a name meaning "Aletheia of Xanthos". Before we start, we'd like to apologize for the time it has taken to complete this report. Unfortunately, we don't have an awful lot to tell you, because we haven't found any sources from your culture that can show us bynames of the sort you want. Your given name is a fine choice, though it wasn't an especially common name: Two examples of are recorded in classical Greek sources [1]. (A slash in a word indicates an acute accent mark over the preceding letter. The symbol represents the Greek letter eta, as opposed to epsilon, which we represent simply as .) By the 5th century, the name was probably pronounced roughly \ah-LEE-thee-ah\, as in modern Greek. is the ancient Greek name of a town in Anatolia [2]. Your word is the feminine form of the adjective "yellow". If you wanted to be "Ale:/theia the Yellow", then would probably be a fine choice; but it is not correct if you want to refer to the town. We aren't certain how a locative byname (a surname derived from the name of a town) was constructed in 5th century Greek. We haven't found any examples to guide us. We think the most likely construction is the feminine form of an adjective derived from the place name, i.e. a word that means "Xanthine [female]". The masculine adjective based on the place name is , and its feminine form is [3]. If followed the same pattern, then the word you want would be , pronounced \KSAHN-thee-ah\. Our best guess is that the name you want would have been . One alternative is the genitive (possessive) form of the place name. That form is used on the seals of some medieval Byzantine officials [4]: Nikophoros oreiarois Panormou "Nikephoros horreiarios of Panormos" Niketa episkopu Tsamandou "Niketas bishop of Tzamandos" The genitive form of a place name does not change to fit the gender of the noun it refers to, so your name might also have been , \ah-LEE-thee-ah KSAHN-thou\. There are other possibilities, too, but we do not have any data to guide us in choosing one over the others. We hope this letter has been useful. Please write us again if any part of it has been unclear or if you have other questions. I was assisted in researching and writing this letter by Galiana de Baiona, Maridonna Benvenuti, Aryanhwy merch Catmael, Adelaide de Beaumont, Talan Gwynek, and Ursula Georges. For the Academy, Arval Benicoeur 14 May 2003 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - References [1] Fraser, P.M., and E. Matthews, "The Lexicon of Greek Personal Names" (WWW: Oxford University, 1998), vol. 1 (spelled alpha lambda eta theta epsilon iota alpha) and vol. III.A (spelled alpha lambda eta theta iota alpha). http://www.lgpn.ox.ac.uk/ [2] The Getty Information Institute Thesaurus of Geographic Names (WWW: Getty Information Institute, 1999). http://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabulary/tgn/index.html [3] Berry, George Ricker, "The Appendix of Proper and Geographical Names" in _The Classic Greek Dictionary_ (Chicago: Follett Publishing Co., 1962), s.n. . [4] "Byzantine Seals: 1025-1261" in "Prosopography of the Byzantine Empire" (WWW: Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London). http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/PBE/seals/index.htm