Onomastic Contact Between Women’s Names in Latin and Greek: Inscriptional Evidence for Paradigms in -e and -a

In this thesis, I explore three main paradigms by which Greek female names in -e are declined in Latin inscriptional evidence. The first paradigm is the transliterated forms of the Greek first declension: nominative -e, accusative -em/-en, genitive -es, dative -e and ablative -e. The second paradigm is formed from an extension in -n- (nominative -e, accusative -enem, genitive -enis, dative -eni, ablative -ene) and the third from an extension in -t- (nominative -e, accusative -etem, genitive -etis, dative -eti, ablative -ete). These paradigms are also used to varying extents on Latin cognomina in -a and very occasionally, nouns and adjectives. The purpose of this PhD is to examine how and why these paradigms are used. By understanding better these paradigms, I can see how women used morphological variation to show a possible bilingual identity. Latin inscriptional evidence is used to track the temporal and geographical distributions of these paradigms. I have placed no temporal or geographical limits on my evidence collection in order to see most clearly where and when these paradigms are used. This thesis consists of seven chapters. In Chapter 1, I detail the process of my evidence collection, the methodology of analysis and some assumptions and sound changes that need to be considered for this work. Chapter 2 is dedicated to the paradigm -e, -enis and Chapter 3 to -e, -etis. Here I determine how, when and where these two paradigms are used and give possible explanations for how the paradigms were created. Chapter 4 compares two genitive endings, -es and -aes. Whilst -aes has been repeatedly discussed by scholars, this is the first attempt to discuss how it is used and why it might have formed using all the data available to us. Chapter 5 details three further paradigms which may be connected to the three main paradigms discussed in this thesis. They are; -a, -anis, -a(s), -atis, and -is, -inis. Chapter 6 analyses all three paradigms together, -e, -es, -e, -enis and -e, -etis. This allows me to see patterns across the usage of Greek-influenced paradigms. Here I show that there are different patterns of distribution for Latin cognomina and Greek cognomina. Finally, Chapter 7 summarizes the key findings of this thesis and their effect on our understanding of the morphological variation on female names in Latin.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2024

Author dc:creator

• Smith, Rhiannon

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Zair, Nicolas

• Classics
• Latin
• Onomastics
• Morphology
• Linguistics

Licence

• https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/59ea5b9c-1b9d-4949-8a5d-ddcb32896a02/download
• http://purl.org/NET/rdflicense/allrightsreserved

Language dc:language

eng

DOI dc:identifier.doi

https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.122977

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/392187