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  Torsten Meißner, ed. Personal Names in the western Roman world. Proceedings of a workshop convened by Torsten Meißner, José Luis García Ramón and Paolo Poccetti, held at Pembroke College, Cambridge, 16-18 September 2011 , Studies in Classical and Comparative onomastics I, Berlin: Curach Bhán Publications 2012. The exciting thing about ancient anthroponymy is its multifacetic nature: it can be observed from the distance and admired as the scattered remains of a single name bear testimony of a once huge empire. It can bear witness to social change and the strife of the individual to attain a better position in life and erase the traces of his older loyalties. But at the microscopic level it can also tell us more about the naming habits of a small community than its neighbours probably knew about. And it is a better tool for the reconstruction of dialectal variation, of the nowadays fashionable but still poorly understood phenomenon of language contact and, in some circumstances, of some aspects of the parent language, than has often been recognized. This volume is the product of a scientific meeting which took place in Cambridge in September 2011 under the auspices of the European Science Foundation. It exemplifies most of the complementary approaches reviewed above. What many of its valuable contributions have in common, beside the onomastic and epigraphical nature of the material, is a focus on method, which seeks to test some recent views about the  pragmatics of ancient names, as, for example, how many linguistic ‘layers’ names hide, and to class names according to hitherto often underrated dialectal or local differences. It is, on the other hand, somewhat heterogeneous in aim and scope. It is regrettable that Hispania and Britannia have been completely excluded from the picture of the ‘western Roman world’, which for some contributors embraces parts of Asia Minor; Hispania is only alluded to in passing when names are studied which are found (or have alleged cognates) there, and then the references and the terminology itself are inadequate or simply misinformed. This would be understandable if the whole book had been conceived of in terms of, say, Gaulish, Germanic and Italic vs. Roman onomastics, which is not the case, however, since occasionally a study of the extant names of tiny regions is thoroughly undertaken. The result is therefore somewhat unbalanced, especially if one trusts the rather general title. Since in spite of the increasing scientific literature a number of the prism facets and their possible combinations have been traditionally overlooked, this can be seen as the beginning of a more complex and ambitious approach. Now that we can avail ourselves of such powerful devices as the online epigraphical databases there is no excuse not to tackle this task in a holistic way, and this book is on the right track. H. Solin wonders ‘Do we need a new Latin onomasticon?’ (3-9). In a rather amusing vein, this specialist uses the TLL as the butt of his jokes to illustrate lots of errors and inconsistencies peculiar to the task of writing a dictionary of all kinds of Latin proper names, which I agree with him we need to write anew. But what is a Latin name? this question he does not answer. It is no secret that names have to be understood in their ‘thickness’, that is not only paying attention to their etymology but also to their spatial spread, inclusion in Latin formulae, derivational resources or little changes giving away a foreign pronunciation, not to speak of the load of erroneous readings and ghostwords  that one encounters everyday in the most reputed databases and dictionaries. The  boundaries are fuzzy to the point that one wonders where a Latin onomasticon ends. Even in purely indigenous inscriptions Latin names turn up, and vice versa indigenous names occasionally turn up disguised by means of Latin inflectional endings. Many times, names included in Latin epigraphy have been labeled as Latin in spite of being so entrenched in a purely local tradition that they do not even deserve to be classed as  pseudo-gentilics. But even this caveat is insufficient: what makes ‘different’ names? By way of example I will quote an alleged nomen  in the gen. sg. CAERRI (cf. Solin – Salomies 1994, 40) which is attested twice in Hispania. As a matter of fact, it is not only indigenous, but a mere variant of the exclusively Hispanic CAERIVS, to which it can  be linked simply by admitting a trivial resyllabication of –  r.y -. This is why epigraphy and linguistics should always go hand in hand to achieve sound results in spite of the diffidence expressed by some specialists, and why the available dictionaries of nomina gentilia are inadequate in the first place. M. Th. Raepsaet-Charlier ‘“Decknamen”, homophony, assonance: An appraisal of consonance phenomena in onomastics of the Roman empire’ (11-23) reminds us, by using her own coined term ‘assonance’, how simplistic traditional views have been regarding the synchronic attitudes and motives of people who used and gave names which looked superficially Latin but were strongly reminiscent of Celtic words. Unfortunately, however, these sound provisos have become so fashionable that they have led to very questionable lines of reasoning, as we are going to see below. M. Dondin-Payre ‘Les processus d’adaptation des onomastiques indigènes à l’onomastique romaine’ (25-38) analyzes the evolution of the Roman filiative formula and its progressive acquisition by  peregrini  in different areas. I would however use the naming formulae as attested or alternatively extract the names in the nominative when  possible, because an inadvertent mixture of both occasionally makes the structure opaque: IANVARINIAE MATRONAE CONIVX and SIMPLICIVS IVSTIVS IVSTINVS CONIVX (31) make no sense: recte , as actually attested, IANVARINIAE MATRONAE CONIVGI, SIMPLICIVS IVSTIVS IVSTINVS CONIVGI. G. Rocca ‘L’onomastica nelle iscrizioni del Piemonte orientale’ (85-108) aims to interpret the personal names of eastern Piedmont, before which she more or less establishes the premise that nearly everything is suspicious of being Celtic in a Latinate guise. It is therefore no wonder that in her conclusions she avers that everything turns out really as expected. She first of all keeps to the cities in a small modern region of Italy, which in my experience yields unreliable results. Actually, she amplifies her scope by mentioning cognate names from everywhere, but before doing so one has to know very well what one is talking about: Overall reference to western Hispanic material as ‘Celtiberian’ has long been proved untenable. Her views on Lusitanian as a Celtic language are not only wrong, but they draw on outdated hypotheses which are  perpetuated among Italian specialists: For instance, A. Prosdocimi (whom she does not name because she relies on a second hand account) once concluded that Lusitanian is Celtic on the flimsy grounds that –  ā  stems have an accusative in –  in , witness a divine name CROVGIN. This would be illogical in itself for a divine name which is invariably inflective for the dative like the rest of them all over Hispania, and specifically  regarding a number of examples of CROVGIAI, were it not because this only example of an ending –  in was corrected as CROVGIAI more than twenty years ago (see B. M. Prósper 2002, passim). If one relies on dictionaries in which everything under the sun is claimed to be Celtic and then quotes what they say in a noncommittal way, there is no conclusion in the strict sense. On a superficial glance, one gets for instance that, according to Rocca, BLESIDIVS comes from Celtic * bled  - ‘wolf’, when in fact it is only an etacistic variant of Lat.  Blaesus  (cf. BLAESIDIENA in Lusitania; whether Celtib. BALAESVS is related or not is another matter). METTIVS is a form for which she gives no explanation, when it is only a resyllabicated byform of common METIVS, attested as far as Beirut (and therefore it is the spatial distribution of this phenomenon is common that should be paid attention, since it may be a token of celticity). The pseudo-gentilic VLATTIVS is in fact of Celtic ancestry, but it would have sufficed to posit a  past participle * u̯ lH  -tó - beside her mention of the Gaulish name VLATTOS ( recte  VLATVS, in coins VLATOS). Pusillus  is unlikely to be a diminutive of Lat.  pusus   because a direct derivational relationship is in principle not likely, but is perhaps related to the synonymous  pullus . A probably Celtic Pusinca  in Spain calls for prudence. CALVENTIVS, attested all over the empire, is not a derivative of * kalu -, but the Latin  present participle of a deadjectival, stative verb, whether this in turn is attested or not, like  Albentius  or  Magnentius . PETRONIVS is by no means derived from the Celtic compositional form * k  u̯ etru -, but an Italic derivative * k  u̯ etr  ō(n)   from the cardinal ‘4’, like Pomponius  from ‘5’. I am at a loss as to why for CATVL[---] all possible explanations are offered, such as Celtic * katu - or * katto - ‘cat’, except the obvious one that would trace it back to Italic * katelo - ‘cub’. Even if the reader cannot at some places tell if she is speaking of Celtic etymologies in the literal sense or vaguely invoking ‘assonance’, direct or indirect relationship of these forms with Celtic simply begs the question. K. McDonald’s ‘Do personal names in south Oscan show influence from Greek?’ (41-58) is a well-honed epigraphical and linguistic analysis, in which she concedes that in view of some new readings it is difficult to find traces of Greek influence on South Oscan naming habits. P. Poccetti’s ‘Personal names and ethnic names in archaic Italy’ (59-83), is an overview of the extant Italic, Greek and Etruscan materials concerning the relations between these two onomastic classes as few scholars can afford to undertake; he provides a modellic and well informed approach to the names of the Umbrians, Sicily, Sybaris, the Tyrrhenians, the Latini, etc. He deals in detail with a very intriguing case, the unproductive relational suffix –  (e)lo -, which is especially common in ethnic names sometimes held to be diminutives. One wonders if some of the nuclear examples, such as  Rutilus /  Rutuli , could be the result of liquid dissimilation plus anaptyxis or a substrate form ultimately from *  Hrudh-ro -, and then how many of them can be srcinally colour names (as Poenuli  ‘red ones’, cf. aquilus , nubilus  ‘dark’?). If  Romulus  means ‘related to Rome’, this connection might be due to paretymology; and the relationship of Volsci  with Vulsculus  and Poeni  with Poenulus  seems endocentric anyway. A unitary account of all the cases of this suffix, sometimes loanwords into or from other dialects, seems  very difficult, and a modern study of the few Latin and Sabellic forms containing it would be welcome. F. Biville ‘Un défi pour l’anthroponymie latine: Les noms grec féminins en - ō ’ (127-39) concludes that these names form a micro-system inside Latin onomastics, which are generally integrated in the –  ōn -stems, although a close examination reveals some less frequent adaptations ‘à la grecque’. F. Logozzo ‘Greek personal names in southern Italy: Aspects of continuity and differentiation’ (141-47) reviews family names of Greek srcin found in the registry office of Calabria which cannot be recovered from the usual dictionaries and recommends further research in Calabrian diocese archives. One can only agree with P. Sims-Williams’ methodologically oriented contribution ‘Celtic personal names’ (151-66) when he wonders how far we are ready to go to glean Celtic forms from Latin inscriptions. His misgivings about including forms like Tautius  are fully justified, since in my view they can be accounted for by no fewer than three hypotheses: As substrate names, or as Celtic names with substrate phonetics, or as Celtic names ore latino , once Latin only had a diphthong /au/ left. I also suscribe to his daringly explicit assumption that the best epigraphical readings are those propounded by linguists, unfortunately often an anathema to our field. J. Zeidler ‘Gallo-Roman aristocracy and the Gaulish language’ (167-77) also relies heavily on the idea that Celtic names underlie Latin names in Gaul; some of his etymologies are imaginative but slightly inexact:  Rōscia  is not very likely to go back to ‘something like * rud-sko - “the red one”’, but perhaps to * ro u̯ d-sko -. That the frequency of Seuērus  in Gaul is diagnostic of its being an ‘intercultural name’ is hypothetical, but at all events it cannot be connected with ‘a possible Gaulish compound * su- vēru - “very generous”’ because the postulate of a long vowel is unwarranted. In fact, allophonic length of accented vowels might be invoked to underpin this kind of identifications, as has been done in the past to explain some traits of the Romance languages. His view that  Remigius  conceals a Gaulish * rēmo - ‘first’ is attractive, but that the suffix appears as - igi̯o - instead of - iki̯o - can be put down to a bunch of Latin forms in –  igium  (among which nauigium  and remigium ), rather than to a vaguely accounted-for ‘ambiguity in writing intervocalic (lenis) k  ’ for which he gives no parallels nor a closer phonetic description of the synchronic Gaulish system proposed; this is a slippery ground, where one risks to be suspected of superimposing one’s particular onomastic preconceptions on an inadequately known language system. Zeidler additionally provides an etymology of  patērae  in Ausonius as * k  u̯  ə  H-te i̯ -  + - ro - ‘observer, diviner or prophet’ with ‘retention’ of a labiovelar in Celtic. Still, the expected result of the zero grade would have been * kū -, and not * k  u̯ a - as implied here, which means the labiovelar would have  been reintroduced on the analogy of synchronic morphonological alternations of CV  :/ Că -. T. Meißner, ‘Celtic and Germanic names and naming traditions’ (179-98) produces an elegant and exhaustive overview of a not often studied matter: the persistence of the father’s name in the Celtic and Germanic naming traditions, concluding that whereas Celts usually did not name their children after themselves, high-class Germanic people  partially did by means of variation (persistence of a name element) and alliteration.  Some unexpected traits of Germanic compounded names, like the stem vowel –  o -, are deliberate attempts to celtizise them. J.-L. García-Ramón, ‘  Anthroponymia Italica . Onomastics, lexicon and languages in contact in ancient Italy: Latin and Sabellic names with /Op-/ and /Ops-/’ (109-23) offers a finegrained and srcinal etymological analysis of a large and difficult number of Italic  personal names beginning by * op(s) - and claimed to be compatible with no fewer than four different IE roots. In classifying the names according to this premise, he makes a masterly use of the tools of IE word formation and of first hand information about the relevant materials, two things one unfortunately misses in most onomastic studies. D. Kölligan ‘Germanic personal names in Latin inscriptions: Names of the Germani Cisrhenani  and the Ubii ’ (199-219) provides a sensitive, well documented etymological analysis of the personal names of the abovementioned Germanic tribes that reveals the  presence of Celtic, Latin and marginally Greek names beside the Germanic ones. Indigenous forms from different dialects are difficult to tell apart in some regions whose onomastics cannot be understood in the light of appellatives or longer texts, often with the questionable consequences reviewed above. This kind of material must consequently be handled with the utmost care. In this sense, D. Dana ‘La differenciation interne de l’onomastique thrace’ (223-45) delves into the onomastics of a big area comprising ancient Thracia, Moesia, Dacia and  parts of Asia Minor, and sorts the personal names into four categories resulting from a thorough linguistic analysis: Thracian and pan-Thracian; Dacian or Daco-Moesian; western Thracian and Bithynian. D. Stifter’s work ‘On the linguistic situation of Roman-period Ig’ (247-65) is notable for its subtle, unprejudiced discrimination between Celtic and non-Celtic forms  belonging to what he labels the ‘Iggian’ dialect, once spoken in present day Slovenia. He offers some new interesting etymologies. I would only make the point that some interpretations remain open: OPPALVS (260) is in his view reflective of resyllabication from * oplo -, attested as such as OPLVS; but this phenomenon usually pursues to turn unstable syllable onsets into slopes: Thus, from * op.lo - we would expect * op.plo -, as in It.  pubblico . The existence of OPPONIVS or OPPIVS points to addition of –  alo -, whether Celtic or not, and OPLVS may as well be a byform of OEPLVS for all we know. I wonder if the strange name BOLERIANVS (256), which he relates to Celtic names in –  bolus , could be considered a misspelled rendition of Valerianus  (which is gainsaid by its four occurrences) or a rounded pronunciation in a labial context in view of ADNOMATVS (which he correctly puts down to an adaptation of Celtic /a:/ to the  phonology of the local language), and with a lesser degree of certainty DECOMONIS. Stifter concludes that this language, which he formerly called Para-Venetic, is a centum  dialect different from Celtic, Venetic and Pannonian. Summing up, the research of personal names is taking many steps forward in the way of linguistic analysis and methodology besides being constantly enriched by new readings and recent discoveries. Let us only hope that the near future will see an increasing number of high-level volumes and proceedings as stimulating and carefully edited as this one.