Indo-European Personal Names

Abstract

The basic tenet of Indo-Europeanists with regard to personal proper names has been, stated briefly,' that the typical Indo-European name is a dithematic compound, as exemplified most eminently by many Indic, Greek, and Germanic names. Any name that is not compounded in a like manner, it is asserted, is either actually a shortened hypocoristic form of an original dithematic name, or is some sort of nickname or hybrid-at any rate not a genuine original. If indeed the theory went only so far as to state that the predominant feature of a great number of Indo-European names, particularly in Indic, Greek, and Germanic, is a form of composition resulting largely in the dithematic onomastic type, no serious objection could be raised. But the creators and propagators of this theory were obviously determined to arrive at some more comprehensively valid rule. Of course, this rule was bound to include exceptions; but not even the existence of an abnormally great number of exceptions seemed to arouse any grave doubts as to the universal applicability of the rule, nor was it deemed necessary on their account to investigate the causes of the divergencies. First of all, one is struck by that very important exception covering the entire Latin onomastic system, where hardly any trace appears of the so-called IndoEuropean name. Yet at least one scholar thought to have discovered what he believed to be the remnants of the ancient Indo-European system.2 It is affirmed, for example, that Lucius is not derived from lucere, 'quia oriente luce natus est', but is a shortened form (Kurzform) of Lucifer. To create any such hypothetical etymology, particularly in onomastics, means to run great danger of being wrong. For there are actually only a few persons in the world who could tell why the first or any subsequent Lucius was so called, and those persons are either Lucius himself, or perhaps his parents, or at best an authority who had a direct personal knowledge of the particular case in question. Whatever the merits of this one example may be, the same author produces many instances of Latin dithematic names, and in several cases gives a good argument for the derivation of a monothematic from an original dithematic form. But the conclusions, I think, go much further than the evidence warrants: