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104-413: Streit is a surname , and may refer to: Surname used as given name Organizations Surname A surname , family name , or last name is the mostly hereditary portion of one's personal name that indicates one's family. It is typically combined with a given name to form the full name of a person, although several given names and surnames are possible in the full name. In modern times
208-453: A canonical text. The first printed edition of Homer was produced in 1488 in Milan, Italy by Demetrios Chalkokondyles . Today scholars use medieval manuscripts, papyri and other sources; some argue for a "multi-text" view, rather than seeking a single definitive text. The nineteenth-century edition of Arthur Ludwich mainly follows Aristarchus's work, whereas van Thiel's (1991, 1996) follows
312-610: A clear overall design and that they are not merely strung together from unrelated songs. It is also generally agreed that each poem was composed mostly by a single author, who probably relied heavily on older oral traditions. Nearly all scholars agree that the Doloneia in Book X of the Iliad is not part of the original poem, but rather a later insertion by a different poet. Some ancient scholars believed Homer to have been an eyewitness to
416-526: A comma, and items are alphabetized by the last name. In France, Italy, Spain, Belgium and Latin America, administrative usage is to put the surname before the first on official documents. In most Balto-Slavic languages (such as Latvian, Lithuanian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Polish, Slovak, Czech, etc.) as well as in Greek , Irish, Icelandic , and Azerbaijani , some surnames change form depending on
520-531: A discredited dead end. Starting in around 1928, Milman Parry and Albert Lord , after their studies of folk bards in the Balkans, developed the "Oral-Formulaic Theory" that the Homeric poems were originally composed through improvised oral performances, which relied on traditional epithets and poetic formulas. This theory found very wide scholarly acceptance and explained many previously puzzling features of
624-578: A famous ancestor, or the place of origin; but they were not universal. For example, Hunayn ibn Ishaq (fl. 850 AD) was known by the nisbah "al-'Ibadi", a federation of Arab Christian tribes that lived in Mesopotamia prior to the advent of Islam . In Ancient Greece, as far back as the Archaic Period clan names and patronymics ("son of") were also common, as in Aristides as Λῡσῐμᾰ́χου –
728-464: A genitive singular form meaning son of Lysimachus. For example, Alexander the Great was known as Heracleides , as a supposed descendant of Heracles , and by the dynastic name Karanos / Caranus , which referred to the founder of the dynasty to which he belonged . These patronymics are already attested for many characters in the works of Homer . At other times formal identification commonly included
832-619: A number of sources, was an English nickname meaning "effeminate". A group of nicknames look like occupational ones: King , Bishop , Abbot , Sheriff , Knight , etc. but it is rather unlikely that a person with surname King was a king or descended from a king. Bernard Deacon suggests that the first nickname/surname bearer may have acted as a king or bishop, or was corpulent as bishop. etc. A considerable group of surname-producing nicknames may be found among ethnonymic surnames . Ornamental surnames are made up of names, not specific to any attribute (place, parentage, occupation, caste) of
936-415: A phrase or idea is repeated at both the beginning and end of a story, or a series of such ideas first appears in the order A, B, C ... before being reversed as ... C, B, A) has been observed in the Homeric epics. Opinion differs as to whether these occurrences are a conscious artistic device, a mnemonic aid or a spontaneous feature of human storytelling. Both of the Homeric poems begin with an invocation to
1040-736: A surname tradition. Ornamental surnames are more common in communities that adopted (or were forced to adopt) surnames in the 18th and 19th centuries. They occur commonly in Scandinavia, and among Sinti and Roma and Jews in Germany and Austria. During the era of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade many Africans were given new names by their masters. Many of the family names of many African-Americans have their origins in slavery ( i.e. slave name ). Some freed slaves later created family names themselves. Another category of acquired names
1144-602: Is Velbienė , and his unmarried daughter, Velbaitė . Many surnames include prefixes that may or may not be separated by a space or punctuation from the main part of the surname. These are usually not considered true compound names, rather single surnames are made up of more than one word. These prefixes often give hints about the type or origin of the surname (patronymic, toponymic, notable lineage) and include words that mean from [a place or lineage], and son of/daughter of/child of. The common Celtic prefixes "Ó" or "Ua" (descendant of) and "Mac" or "Mag" (son of) can be spelled with
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#17327718130871248-521: Is foundlings names. Historically, children born to unwed parents or extremely poor parents would be abandoned in a public place or anonymously placed in a foundling wheel . Such abandoned children might be claimed and named by religious figures, the community leaders, or adoptive parents. Some such children were given surnames that reflected their condition, like (Italian) Esposito , Innocenti , Della Casagrande , Trovato , Abbandonata, or (Dutch) Vondeling, Verlaeten, Bijstand. Other children were named for
1352-546: Is also customary for the Baltic Finnic peoples and the Hungarians , but other Uralic peoples traditionally did not have surnames, perhaps because of the clan structure of their societies. The Samis , depending on the circumstances of their names, either saw no change or did see a transformation of their name. For example: Sire in some cases became Siri, and Hætta Jáhkoš Ásslat became Aslak Jacobsen Hætta – as
1456-545: Is also the name of one of Japan's prefectures ), Yamamoto (山本) means "the base of the mountain", and Inoue (井上) means "above the well". Arabic names sometimes contain surnames that denote the city of origin. For example, in cases of Saddam Hussein al Tikriti, meaning Saddam Hussein originated from Tikrit , a city in Iraq . This component of the name is called a nisbah . The meanings of some names are unknown or unclear. The most common European name in this category may be
1560-659: Is also the case in Cambodia and among the Hmong of Laos and Thailand . The Telugu people of south India also place surname before personal name. There are some parts of Europe, in particular Hungary , where the surname is placed before the personal name. Since family names are normally written last in European societies, the terms last name or surname are commonly used for the family name, while in Japan (with vertical writing)
1664-523: Is called onomastics . While the use of given names to identify individuals is attested in the oldest historical records, the advent of surnames is relatively recent. Many cultures have used and continue to use additional descriptive terms in identifying individuals. These terms may indicate personal attributes, location of origin, occupation, parentage, patronage, adoption, or clan affiliation. In China, according to legend, family names started with Emperor Fu Xi in 2000 BC. His administration standardised
1768-566: Is called parataxis . The so-called ' type scenes ' ( typische Szenen ), were named by Walter Arend in 1933. He noted that Homer often, when describing frequently recurring activities such as eating, praying , fighting and dressing, used blocks of set phrases in sequence that were then elaborated by the poet. The 'Analyst' school had considered these repetitions as un-Homeric, whereas Arend interpreted them philosophically. Parry and Lord noted that these conventions are found in many other cultures. 'Ring composition' or chiastic structure (when
1872-618: Is credited as the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey , two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature . Homer is considered one of the most revered and influential authors in history. Homer's Iliad centers on a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles during the last year of the Trojan War . The Odyssey chronicles the ten-year journey of Odysseus , king of Ithaca , back to his home after
1976-658: Is fundamentally based on Ionic Greek , in keeping with the tradition that Homer was from Ionia. Linguistic analysis suggests that the Iliad was composed slightly before the Odyssey and that Homeric formulae preserve features older than other parts of the poems. The poems were composed in unrhymed dactylic hexameter ; ancient Greek metre was quantity-based rather than stress-based. Homer frequently uses set phrases such as epithets ('crafty Odysseus ', 'rosy-fingered Dawn ', 'owl-eyed Athena ', etc.), Homeric formulae ('and then answered [him/her], Agamemnon, king of men', 'when
2080-413: Is placed before personal / first name and in most cases it is only shown as an initial (for example 'S.' for Suryapeth). In English and other languages like Spanish—although the usual order of names is "first middle last"—for the purpose of cataloging in libraries and in citing the names of authors in scholarly papers, the order is changed to "last, first middle," with the last and first names separated by
2184-505: The Capture of Oechalia , and the Phocais . These claims are not considered authentic today and were not universally accepted in the ancient world. As with the multitude of legends surrounding Homer's life, they indicate little more than the centrality of Homer to ancient Greek culture. Some ancient accounts about Homer were established early and repeated often. They include that Homer
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#17327718130872288-680: The Arab world , the use of patronymics is well attested. The famous scholar Rhazes ( c. 865–925 AD ) is referred to as "al-Razi" (lit. the one from Ray) due to his origins from the city of Ray , Iran. In the Levant , surnames were in use as early as the High Middle Ages and it was common for people to derive their surname from a distant ancestor, and historically the surname would be often preceded with 'ibn' or 'son of'. Arab family names often denote either one's tribe , profession ,
2392-573: The Iliad alone is massive, sprawling over nearly 4,000 oversized pages in a 21st-century printed version and his commentary on the Odyssey an additional nearly 2,000. In 1488, the Greek scholar Demetrios Chalkokondyles published in Florence the editio princeps of the Homeric poems. The earliest modern Homeric scholars started with the same basic approaches towards the Homeric poems as scholars in antiquity. The allegorical interpretation of
2496-844: The Iliad and the Odyssey are associated with the name "Homer". In antiquity, a large number of other works were sometimes attributed to him, including the Homeric Hymns , the Contest of Homer and Hesiod , several epigrams , the Little Iliad , the Nostoi , the Thebaid , the Cypria , the Epigoni , the comic mini-epic Batrachomyomachia ("The Frog–Mouse War"), the Margites ,
2600-443: The Iliad and the Odyssey in the sixth century BC by literate authors. After being written down, Wolf maintained that the two poems were extensively edited, modernized, and eventually shaped into their present state as artistic unities. Wolf and the "Analyst" school, which led the field in the nineteenth century, sought to recover the original, authentic poems which were thought to be concealed by later excrescences. Within
2704-462: The Muse . In the Iliad , the poet beseeches her to sing of "the anger of Achilles", and in the Odyssey , he asks her to tell of "the man of many ways". A similar opening was later employed by Virgil in his Aeneid . The orally transmitted Homeric poems were put into written form at some point between the eighth and sixth centuries BCE. Some scholars believe that they were dictated to a scribe by
2808-639: The Odyssey during the Hellenistic and Roman periods. As a result of the poems' prominence in classical Greek education, extensive commentaries on them developed to explain parts that were culturally or linguistically difficult. During the Hellenistic and Roman periods, many interpreters, especially the Stoics , who believed that Homeric poems conveyed Stoic doctrines, regarded them as allegories, containing hidden wisdom. Perhaps partially because of
2912-574: The Odyssey in which Telemachus went in search of news of his father not to Menelaus in Sparta but to Idomeneus in Crete, in which Telemachus met up with his father in Crete and conspired with him to return to Ithaca disguised as the soothsayer Theoclymenus, and in which Penelope recognized Odysseus much earlier in the narrative and conspired with him in the destruction of the suitors. Most contemporary scholars, although they disagree on other questions about
3016-427: The Trojan War ; others thought he had lived up to 500 years afterwards. Contemporary scholars continue to debate the date of the poems. A long history of oral transmission lies behind the composition of the poems, complicating the search for a precise date. At one extreme, Richard Janko has proposed a date for both poems to the eighth century BC based on linguistic analysis and statistics. Barry B. Powell dates
3120-517: The "hereditary" requirement is a traditional, although common, interpretation, since in most countries a person has a right for a name change . Depending on culture, the surname may be placed at either the start of a person's name, or at the end. The number of surnames given to an individual also varies: in most cases it is just one, but in Portuguese-speaking countries and many Spanish-speaking countries, two surnames (one inherited from
3224-600: The -is suffix will have the -i suffix. Latvian, like Lithuanian, uses strictly feminized surnames for women, even in the case of foreign names. The function of the suffix is purely grammatical. Male surnames ending -e or -a need not be modified for women. Exceptions are: In Iceland, surnames have a gender-specific suffix (-dóttir = daughter, -son = son). This was also the case in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, until they were abolished by law in 1856, 1923, and 1966 respectively. Finnish used gender-specific suffixes up to 1929 when
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3328-475: The 11th century by the barons in England. English surnames began as a way of identifying a certain aspect of that individual, such as by trade, father's name, location of birth, or physical features, and were not necessarily inherited. By 1400 most English families, and those from Lowland Scotland, had adopted the use of hereditary surnames. The study of proper names (in family names, personal names, or places)
3432-545: The Analyst school were two camps: proponents of the "lay theory", which held that the Iliad and the Odyssey were put together from a large number of short, independent songs, and proponents of the "nucleus theory", which held that Homer had originally composed shorter versions of the Iliad and the Odyssey , which later poets expanded and revised. A small group of scholars opposed to the Analysts, dubbed "Unitarians", saw
3536-800: The Bronze Age Aegean civilisation , which in many ways resembles the ancient Near East more than the society described by Homer. Some aspects of the Homeric world are simply made up; for instance, the Iliad 22.145–56 describes there being two springs that run near the city of Troy, one that runs steaming hot and the other that runs icy cold. It is here that Hector takes his final stand against Achilles. Archaeologists, however, have uncovered no evidence that springs of this description ever actually existed. The Homeric epics are written in an artificial literary language or 'Kunstsprache' only used in epic hexameter poetry. Homeric Greek shows features of multiple regional Greek dialects and periods, but
3640-533: The Eastern Roman Empire, however it was not until the 11th century that surnames came to be used in West Europe. Medieval Spain used a patronymic system. For example, Álvaro, a son of Rodrigo, would be named Álvaro Rodríguez. His son, Juan, would not be named Juan Rodríguez, but Juan Álvarez. Over time, many of these patronymics became family names, and they are some of the most common names in
3744-500: The Form of an epic Poem till Pisistratus ' time, about 500 Years after." Friedrich August Wolf 's Prolegomena ad Homerum , published in 1795, argued that much of the material later incorporated into the Iliad and the Odyssey was originally composed in the tenth century BC in the form of short, separate oral songs, which passed through oral tradition for roughly four hundred years before being assembled into prototypical versions of
3848-424: The Homeric poems also contain instances of comedy and laughter . Homer's epic poems shaped aspects of ancient Greek culture and education, fostering ideals of heroism, glory, and honor. To Plato , Homer was simply the one who "has taught Greece" ( τὴν Ἑλλάδα πεπαίδευκεν , tēn Helláda pepaídeuken ). In Dante Alighieri 's Divine Comedy , Virgil refers to Homer as "Poet sovereign", king of all poets; in
3952-476: The Homeric poems that had been so prevalent in antiquity returned to become the prevailing view of the Renaissance . Renaissance humanists praised Homer as the archetypically wise poet, whose writings contain hidden wisdom, disguised through allegory. In western Europe during the Renaissance , Virgil was more widely read than Homer and Homer was often seen through a Virgilian lens. In 1664, contradicting
4056-433: The Homeric poems' extensive use in education, many authors believed that Homer's original purpose had been to educate. Homer's wisdom became so widely praised that he began to acquire the image of almost a prototypical philosopher. Byzantine scholars such as Eustathius of Thessalonica and John Tzetzes produced commentaries, extensions and scholia to Homer, especially in the twelfth century. Eustathius's commentary on
4160-563: The Homeric poems, including their unusually archaic language, their extensive use of stock epithets, and their other "repetitive" features. Many scholars concluded that the "Homeric Question" had finally been answered. Meanwhile, the 'Neoanalysts' sought to bridge the gap between the 'Analysts' and 'Unitarians'. The Neoanalysts sought to trace the relationships between the Homeric poems and other epic poems, which have now been lost, but of which modern scholars do possess some patchy knowledge. Neoanalysts hold that knowledge of earlier versions of
4264-574: The Irish name Ryan , which means 'little king' in Irish. Also, Celtic origin of the name Arthur, meaning ' bear '. Other surnames may have arisen from more than one source: the name De Luca , for instance, likely arose either in or near Lucania or in the family of someone named Lucas or Lucius; in some instances, however, the name may have arisen from Lucca, with the spelling and pronunciation changing over time and with emigration. The same name may appear in different cultures by coincidence or romanization;
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4368-519: The Marriage Act forced women to use the husband's form of the surname. In 1985, this clause was removed from the act. Until at least 1850, women's surnames were suffixed with an -in in Tyrol. Some Slavic cultures originally distinguished the surnames of married and unmarried women by different suffixes, but this distinction is no longer widely observed. Some Czech dialects (Southwest-Bohemian) use
4472-732: The Netherlands (1795–1811), Japan (1870s), Thailand (1920), and Turkey (1934). The structure of the Japanese name was formalized by the government as family name + given name in 1868. In Breslau Prussia enacted the Hoym Ordinance in 1790, mandating the adoption of Jewish surnames. Napoleon also insisted on Jews adopting fixed names in a decree issued in 1808. Names can sometimes be changed to protect individual privacy (such as in witness protection ), or in cases where groups of people are escaping persecution. After arriving in
4576-485: The Old English element tūn may have originally meant "enclosure" in one name, but can have meant "farmstead", "village", "manor", or "estate" in other names. Location names, or habitation names, may be as generic as "Monte" (Portuguese for "mountain"), "Górski" (Polish for "hill"), or "Pitt" (variant of "pit"), but may also refer to specific locations. "Washington", for instance, is thought to mean "the homestead of
4680-701: The Rosenkrantz ("rose wreath") family took their surname from a wreath of roses comprising the torse of their arms, and the Gyldenstierne ("golden star") family took theirs from a 7-pointed gold star on their shield. Subsequently, many middle-class Scandinavian families desired names similar to those of the nobles and adopted "ornamental" surnames as well. Most other naming traditions refer to them as "acquired". They might be given to people newly immigrated, conquered, or converted, as well as those with unknown parentage, formerly enslaved, or from parentage without
4784-557: The Spanish-speaking world today. Other sources of surnames are personal appearance or habit, e.g. Delgado ("thin") and Moreno ("dark"); geographic location or ethnicity, e.g. Alemán ("German"); and occupations, e.g. Molinero ("miller"), Zapatero ("shoe-maker") and Guerrero ("warrior"), although occupational names are much more often found in a shortened form referring to the trade itself, e.g. Molina ("mill"), Guerra ("war"), or Zapata (archaic form of zapato , "shoe"). In England
4888-642: The United States, European Jews who fled Nazi persecution sometimes anglicized their surnames to avoid discrimination. Governments can also forcibly change people's names, as when the National Socialist government of Germany assigned German names to European people in the territories they conquered. In the 1980s, the People's Republic of Bulgaria forcibly changed the first and last names of its Turkish citizens to Bulgarian names. These are
4992-705: The Western Roman Empire in the 5th century, family names were uncommon in the Eastern Roman Empire . In Western Europe, where Germanic culture dominated the aristocracy, family names were almost non-existent. They would not significantly reappear again in Eastern Roman society until the 10th century, apparently influenced by the familial affiliations of the Armenian military aristocracy. The practice of using family names spread through
5096-513: The cities and the need for new arrivals to choose a defining surname. In Portuguese-speaking countries , it is uncommon, but not unprecedented, to find surnames derived from names of countries, such as Portugal, França, Brasil, Holanda. Surnames derived from country names are also found in English, such as "England", "Wales", "Spain". Some Japanese surnames derive from geographical features; for example, Ishikawa (石川) means "stone river" (and
5200-482: The composition of the Iliad and the Odyssey to sometime between 800 and 750 BC, based on the statement from Herodotus , who lived in the late fifth century BC, that Homer lived four hundred years before his own time "and not more" ( καὶ οὐ πλέοσι ) and on the fact that the poems do not mention hoplite battle tactics, inhumation , or literacy. Martin Litchfield West has argued that the Iliad echoes
5304-596: The days of the Roman emperor Hadrian says Epicaste (daughter of Nestor ) and Telemachus (son of Odysseus ) were the parents of Homer. The two best known ancient biographies of Homer are the Life of Homer by the Pseudo-Herodotus and the Contest of Homer and Hesiod . In the early fourth century BC Alcidamas composed a fictional account of a poetry contest at Chalcis with both Homer and Hesiod . Homer
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#17327718130875408-545: The divisions back further to the Classical period. Very few credit Homer himself with the divisions. In antiquity, it was widely held that the Homeric poems were collected and organised in Athens in the late sixth century BCE by Pisistratus (died 528/7 BCE), in what subsequent scholars have dubbed the "Peisistratean recension". The idea that the Homeric poems were originally transmitted orally and first written down during
5512-479: The early-born rose-fingered Dawn came to light', 'thus he/she spoke'), simile , type scenes, ring composition and repetition. These habits aid the extemporizing bard, and are characteristic of oral poetry. For instance, the main words of a Homeric sentence are generally placed towards the beginning, whereas literate poets like Virgil or Milton use longer and more complicated syntactical structures. Homer then expands on these ideas in subsequent clauses; this technique
5616-511: The epics can be derived from anomalies of structure and detail in the surviving versions of the Iliad and Odyssey . These anomalies point to earlier versions of the Iliad in which Ajax played a more prominent role, in which the Achaean embassy to Achilles comprised different characters, and in which Patroclus was actually mistaken for Achilles by the Trojans. They point to earlier versions of
5720-620: The fall of Troy. The epics depict man's struggle, the Odyssey especially so as Odysseus perseveres through punishment of the gods. The poems are in Homeric Greek , also known as Epic Greek, a literary language which shows a mixture of features of the Ionic and Aeolic dialects from different centuries; the predominant influence is Eastern Ionic. Most researchers believe that the poems were originally transmitted orally . Despite being predominantly known for its tragic and serious themes,
5824-461: The family name may be referred to as "upper name" ( ue-no-namae ( 上の名前 ) ). When people from areas using Eastern naming order write their personal name in the Latin alphabet , it is common to reverse the order of the given and family names for the convenience of Westerners, so that they know which name is the family name for official/formal purposes. Reversing the order of names for the same reason
5928-591: The family of Wassa", while "Lucci" means "resident of Lucca ". Although some surnames, such as "London", "Lisboa", or "Białystok" are derived from large cities, more people reflect the names of smaller communities, as in Ó Creachmhaoil , derived from a village in County Galway . This is thought to be due to the tendency in Europe during the Middle Ages for migration to chiefly be from smaller communities to
6032-634: The female form Nováková, the family name is Novákovi in Czech and Novákovci in Slovak. When the male form is Hrubý and the female form is Hrubá, the plural family name is Hrubí (or "rodina Hrubých"). In Greece, if a man called Papadopoulos has a daughter or wife, she will likely be named Papadopoulou, the genitive form, as if the daughter/wife is "of" a man named Papadopoulos. Likewise, the surnames of daughters and wives of males with surnames ending in -as will end in -a, and those of daughters and wives of males with
6136-411: The first person to acquire the name, and stem from the middle class's desire for their own hereditary names like the nobles. They were generally acquired later in history and generally when those without surnames needed them. In 1526, King Frederik I of Denmark-Norway ordered that noble families must take up fixed surnames, and many of them took as their name some element of their coat of arms; for example,
6240-589: The form "Novákojc" as informal for both genders. In the culture of the Sorbs (a.k.a. Wends or Lusatians), Sorbian used different female forms for unmarried daughters (Jordanojc, Nowcyc, Kubašec, Markulic), and for wives (Nowakowa, Budarka, Nowcyna, Markulina). In Polish, typical surnames for unmarried women ended -ówna, -anka, or -ianka, while the surnames of married women used the possessive suffixes -ina or -owa. In Serbia, unmarried women's surnames ended in -eva, while married women's surnames ended in -ka. In Lithuania, if
6344-462: The gender of the bearer. In Slavic languages, substantivized adjective surnames have commonly symmetrical adjective variants for males and females (Podwiński/Podwińska in Polish, Nový/Nová in Czech or Slovak, etc.). In the case of nominative and quasi-nominative surnames, the female variant is derived from the male variant by a possessive suffix (Novák/Nováková, Hromada/Hromadová). In Czech and Slovak,
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#17327718130876448-432: The genesis of the poems, agree that the Iliad and the Odyssey were not produced by the same author, based on "the many differences of narrative manner, theology, ethics, vocabulary, and geographical perspective, and by the apparently imitative character of certain passages of the Odyssey in relation to the Iliad ." Nearly all scholars agree that the Iliad and the Odyssey are unified poems, in that each poem shows
6552-456: The group. Female praenomina were less common, as women had reduced public influence, and were commonly known by the feminine form of the nomen alone. Later with the gradual influence of Greek and Christian culture throughout the Empire, Christian religious names were sometimes put in front of traditional cognomina , but eventually people reverted to single names. By the time of the fall of
6656-488: The husband is named Vilkas, his wife will be named Vilkienė and his unmarried daughter will be named Vilkaitė. Male surnames have suffixes -as, -is, -ius, or -us, unmarried girl surnames aitė, -ytė, -iūtė or -utė, wife surnames -ienė. These suffixes are also used for foreign names, exclusively for grammar; Welby, the surname of the present Archbishop of Canterbury for example, becomes Velbis in Lithuanian, while his wife
6760-542: The inhabited location associated with the person given that name. Such locations can be any type of settlement, such as homesteads, farms, enclosures, villages, hamlets, strongholds, or cottages. One element of a habitation name may describe the type of settlement. Examples of Old English elements are frequently found in the second element of habitational names. The habitative elements in such names can differ in meaning, according to different periods, different locations, or with being used with certain other elements. For example,
6864-593: The introduction of family names is generally attributed to the preparation of the Domesday Book in 1086, following the Norman Conquest . Evidence indicates that surnames were first adopted among the feudal nobility and gentry, and slowly spread to other parts of society. Some of the early Norman nobility who arrived in England during the Norman conquest differentiated themselves by affixing 'de' (of) before
6968-434: The judge awarded Hesiod the prize; the poet who praised husbandry , he said, was greater than the one who told tales of battles and slaughter. The study of Homer is one of the oldest topics in scholarship, dating back to antiquity. Nonetheless, the aims of Homeric studies have changed over the course of the millennia. The earliest preserved comments on Homer concern his treatment of the gods, which hostile critics such as
7072-535: The later Iron Age during which they were composed; yet the same heroes are cremated (an Iron Age practice) rather than buried (as they were in the Bronze Age). In some parts of the Homeric poems, heroes are described as carrying large shields like those used by warriors during the Mycenaean period , but, in other places, they are instead described carrying the smaller shields that were commonly used during
7176-536: The later additions as superior, the work of a single inspired poet. By around 1830, the central preoccupations of Homeric scholars, dealing with whether or not "Homer" actually existed, when and how the Homeric poems originated, how they were transmitted, when and how they were finally written down, and their overall unity, had been dubbed "the Homeric Question". Following World War I , the Analyst school began to fall out of favor among Homeric scholars. It did not die out entirely, but it came to be increasingly seen as
7280-441: The mandate to have a surname. During the modern era many cultures around the world adopted family names, particularly for administrative reasons, especially during the age of European expansion and particularly since 1600. The Napoleonic Code, adopted in various parts of Europe, stipulated that people should be known by both their given name(s) and a family name that would not change across generations. Other notable examples include
7384-433: The mother and another from the father) are used for legal purposes. Depending on culture, not all members of a family unit are required to have identical surnames. In some countries, surnames are modified depending on gender and family membership status of a person. Compound surnames can be composed of separate names. Using names has been documented in even the oldest historical records. Examples of surnames are documented in
7488-535: The myth of the Trojan War, others that the poem was inspired by multiple similar sieges that took place over the centuries. Most scholars now agree that the Homeric poems depict customs and elements of the material world that are derived from different periods of Greek history. For instance, the heroes in the poems use bronze weapons, characteristic of the Bronze Age in which the poems are set, rather than
7592-638: The name of their village in France. This is what is known as a territorial surname, a consequence of feudal landownership. By the 14th century, most English and most Scottish people used surnames and in Wales following unification under Henry VIII in 1536. A four-year study led by the University of the West of England , which concluded in 2016, analysed sources dating from the 11th to the 19th century to explain
7696-465: The naming system to facilitate census-taking, and the use of census information. Originally, Chinese surnames were derived matrilineally, although by the time of the Shang dynasty (1600 to 1046 BC) they had become patrilineal. Chinese women do not change their names upon marriage. In China, surnames have been the norm since at least the 2nd century BC. In the early Islamic period (640–900 AD) and
7800-412: The occupation of smith . There are also more complicated names based on occupational titles. In England it was common for servants to take a modified version of their employer's occupation or first name as their last name, adding the letter s to the word, although this formation could also be a patronymic . For instance, the surname Vickers is thought to have arisen as an occupational name adopted by
7904-658: The oldest and most common type of surname. They may be a first name such as "Wilhelm", a patronymic such as " Andersen ", a matronymic such as " Beaton ", or a clan name such as " O'Brien ". Multiple surnames may be derived from a single given name: e.g. there are thought to be over 90 Italian surnames based on the given name " Giovanni ". This is the broadest class of surnames, originating from nicknames, encompassing many types of origin. These include names based on appearance such as "Schwartzkopf", "Short", and possibly "Caesar", and names based on temperament and personality such as "Daft", "Gutman", and "Maiden", which, according to
8008-412: The origin describes the original bearer such as Brown, Short , or Thin – though Short may in fact be an ironic 'nickname' surname for a tall person." In the modern era, governments have enacted laws to require people to adopt surnames. This served the purpose of uniquely identifying subjects for taxation purposes or for inheritance. In the late Middle Ages in Europe, there were several revolts against
8112-663: The origins of the surnames in the British Isles . The study found that over 90% of the 45,602 surnames in the dictionary are native to Britain and Ireland, with the most common in the UK being Smith , Jones , Williams , Brown , Taylor , Davies , and Wilson . The findings have been published in the Oxford English Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland , with project leader Richard Coates calling
8216-416: The other extreme, a few American scholars such as Gregory Nagy see "Homer" as a continually evolving tradition, which grew much more stable as the tradition progressed, but which did not fully cease to continue changing and evolving until as late as the middle of the second century BC. "'Homer" is a name of unknown etymological origin, around which many theories were erected in antiquity. One such linkage
8320-497: The place of origin. Over the course of the Roman Republic and the later Empire, naming conventions went through multiple changes. ( See Roman naming conventions . ) The nomen , the name of the gens (tribe) inherited patrilineally, is thought to have already been in use by 650 BC. The nomen was to identify group kinship, while the praenomen (forename; plural praenomina ) was used to distinguish individuals within
8424-476: The poems were created in the eighth century, they continued to be orally transmitted with considerable revision until they were written down in the sixth century. After textualisation, the poems were each divided into 24 rhapsodes, today referred to as books, and labelled by the letters of the Greek alphabet . Most scholars attribute the book divisions to the Hellenistic scholars of Alexandria , in Egypt. Some trace
8528-429: The poet Xenophanes of Colophon denounced as immoral. The allegorist Theagenes of Rhegium is said to have defended Homer by arguing that the Homeric poems are allegories . The Iliad and the Odyssey were widely used as school texts in ancient Greek and Hellenistic cultures. They were the first literary works taught to all students. The Iliad , particularly its first few books, was far more intently studied than
8632-457: The poet and that our inherited versions of the Iliad and Odyssey were in origin orally dictated texts. Albert Lord noted that the Balkan bards that he was studying revised and expanded their songs in their process of dictating. Some scholars hypothesize that a similar process of revision and expansion occurred when the Homeric poems were first written down. Other scholars hold that, after
8736-486: The poetry of Hesiod and that it must have been composed around 660–650 BC at the earliest, with the Odyssey up to a generation later. He also interprets passages in the Iliad as showing knowledge of historical events that occurred in the ancient Near East during the middle of the seventh century BC, including the destruction of Babylon by Sennacherib in 689 BC and the Sack of Thebes by Ashurbanipal in 663/4 BC. At
8840-420: The preface to his translation of the Iliad , Alexander Pope acknowledges that Homer has always been considered the "greatest of poets". From antiquity to the present day, Homeric epics have inspired many famous works of literature, music, art, and film. The question of by whom, when, where and under what circumstances the Iliad and Odyssey were composed continues to be debated. Scholars generally regard
8944-422: The prefix as a separate word, yielding "Ó Briain" or "Mac Millan" as well as the anglicized "O'Brien" and "MacMillan" or "Macmillan". Other Irish prefixes include Ní, Nic (daughter of the son of), Mhic, and Uí (wife of the son of). Homer Homer ( / ˈ h oʊ m ər / ; Ancient Greek : Ὅμηρος [hómɛːros] , Hómēros ; born c. 8th century BCE ) was an Ancient Greek poet who
9048-563: The pure possessive would be Novákova, Hromadova, but the surname evolved to a more adjectivized form Nováková, Hromadová, to suppress the historical possessivity. Some rare types of surnames are universal and gender-neutral: examples in Czech are Janů, Martinů, Fojtů, Kovářů. These are the archaic form of the possessive, related to the plural name of the family. Such rare surnames are also often used for transgender persons during transition because most common surnames are gender-specific. The informal dialectal female form in Polish and Czech dialects
9152-600: The reign of Pisistratus is referenced by the first-century BCE Roman orator Cicero and is also referenced in a number of other surviving sources, including two ancient Lives of Homer . From around 150 BCE, the texts of the Homeric poems found in papyrus fragments exhibit much less variation, and the text seems to have become relatively stable. After the establishment of the Library of Alexandria , Homeric scholars such as Zenodotus of Ephesus, Aristophanes of Byzantium and in particular Aristarchus of Samothrace helped establish
9256-412: The sack of Troy was dated to 1184 BC. By the nineteenth century, there was widespread scholarly skepticism that the Trojan War had ever happened and that Troy had even existed, but in 1873 Heinrich Schliemann announced to the world that he had discovered the ruins of Homer's Troy at Hisarlik in modern Turkey. Some contemporary scholars think the destruction of Troy VIIa c. 1220 BC was the origin of
9360-699: The servant of a vicar, while Roberts could have been adopted by either the son or the servant of a man named Robert. A subset of occupational names in English are names thought to be derived from the medieval mystery plays . The participants would often play the same roles for life, passing the part down to their oldest sons. Names derived from this may include King , Lord and Virgin . A Dictionary of English Surnames says that "surnames of office, such as Abbot , Bishop , Cardinal and King, are often nicknames". The original meaning of names based on medieval occupations may no longer be obvious in modern English. Location (toponymic, habitation) names derive from
9464-516: The society depicted by Homer is based on his own or one which was, even at the time of the poems' composition, known only as legends. The Homeric epics are largely set in the east and center of the Mediterranean , with some scattered references to Egypt , Ethiopia and other distant lands, in a warlike society that resembles that of the Greek world slightly before the hypothesized date of the poems' composition. In ancient Greek chronology,
9568-547: The street/place they were found (Union, Liquorpond (street), di Palermo, Baan, Bijdam, van den Eyngel (shop name), van der Stoep , von Trapp), the date they were found ( Monday , Septembre, Spring, di Gennaio), or festival/feast day they found or christened (Easter, SanJosé). Some foundlings were given the name of whoever found them. Occupational names include Smith , Miller , Farmer , Thatcher , Shepherd , Potter , and so on, and analogous names in many other languages, see, e.g., various surnames associated with
9672-432: The study "more detailed and accurate" than those before. He elaborated on the origins: "Some surnames have origins that are occupational – obvious examples are Smith and Baker. Other names can be linked to a place , for example, Hill or Green, which relates to a village green . Surnames that are 'patronymic' are those which originally enshrined the father's name – such as Jackson , or Jenkinson . There are also names where
9776-676: The surname Lee is used in English culture, but is also a romanization of the Chinese surname Li . In the Russian Empire , illegitimate children were sometimes given artificial surnames rather than the surnames of their adoptive parents. In many cultures (particularly in European and European-influenced cultures in the Americas, Oceania, etc., as well as West Asia/North Africa, South Asia, and most Sub-Saharan African cultures),
9880-611: The surname or family name ("last name") is placed after the personal, forename (in Europe) or given name ("first name"). In other cultures the surname is placed first, followed by the given name or names. The latter is often called the Eastern naming order because Europeans are most familiar with the examples from the East Asian cultural sphere , specifically, Greater China , Korea (both North and South) , Japan , and Vietnam . This
9984-484: The time when the poems were written in the early Iron Age. In the Iliad 10.260–265, Odysseus is described as wearing a helmet made of boar's tusks . Such helmets were not worn in Homer's time, but were commonly worn by aristocratic warriors between 1600 and 1150 BC. The decipherment of Linear B in the 1950s by Michael Ventris and continued archaeological investigation has increased modern scholars' understanding of
10088-419: The two poems as the works of separate authors. It is thought that the poems were composed at some point around the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. Many accounts of Homer's life circulated in classical antiquity , the most widespread that he was a blind bard from Ionia , a region of central coastal Anatolia in present-day Turkey. Modern scholars consider these accounts legendary . Today, only
10192-440: The widespread praise of Homer as the epitome of wisdom, François Hédelin, abbé d'Aubignac wrote a scathing attack on the Homeric poems, declaring that they were incoherent, immoral, tasteless, and without style, that Homer never existed, and that the poems were hastily cobbled together by incompetent editors from unrelated oral songs. Fifty years later, the English scholar Richard Bentley concluded that Homer did exist but that he
10296-404: Was also -ka (Pawlaczka, Kubeška). With the exception of the -ski/-ska suffix, most feminine forms of surnames are seldom observed in Polish. Generally, inflected languages use names and surnames as living words, not as static identifiers. Thus, the pair or the family can be named by a plural form which can differ from the singular male and female form. For instance, when the male form is Novák and
10400-532: Was an obscure, prehistoric oral poet whose compositions bear little relation to the Iliad and the Odyssey as they have been passed down. According to Bentley, Homer "wrote a Sequel of Songs and Rhapsodies, to be sung by himself for small Earnings and good Cheer at Festivals and other Days of Merriment; the Ilias he wrote for men, and the Odysseis for the other Sex. These loose songs were not collected together in
10504-509: Was blind (taking as self-referential a passage describing the blind bard Demodocus ), that he resided at Chios , that he was the son of the river Meles and the nymph Critheïs , that he was a wandering bard, that he composed a varying list of other works (the "Homerica"), that he died either in Ios or after failing to solve a riddle set by fishermen, and various explanations for the name "Homer" ( Ὅμηρος , Hómēros ). Another tradition from
10608-477: Was expected to win, and answered all of Hesiod's questions and puzzles with ease. Then, each of the poets was invited to recite the best passage from their work. Hesiod selected the beginning of Works and Days : "When the Pleiades born of Atlas ... all in due season". Homer chose a description of Greek warriors in formation, facing the foe, taken from the Iliad . Though the crowd acclaimed Homer victor,
10712-547: Was the norm . Recently, integration into the EU and increased communications with foreigners prompted many Samis to reverse the order of their full name to given name followed by surname, to avoid their given name being mistaken for and used as a surname. Indian surnames may often denote village, profession, and/or caste and are invariably mentioned along with the personal/first names. However, hereditary last names are not universal. In Telugu -speaking families in south India, surname
10816-449: Was to the Greek ὅμηρος ( hómēros ' hostage ' or ' surety ' ). The explanations suggested by modern scholars tend to mirror their position on the overall Homeric Question. Nagy interprets it as "he who fits (the song) together". West has advanced both possible Greek and Phoenician etymologies. Scholars continue to debate questions such as whether the Trojan War actually took place – and if so when and where – and to what extent
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