Lexicon of Greek Personal Names

The Lexicon of Greek Personal Names (LGPN) project seeks to create and disseminate a comprehensive and authoritative collection of personal name evidence, and so unlock the potential contained in such names for innovative research into every aspect of ancient Greek life. It covers the period from the earliest historical records (8th century BC) to the early Byzantine period (7th century AD). Its database drawn from the whole sweep of classical sources - everything from archaic graffiti to Church Councils - is LGPN's unique, irreplaceable asset: some 400,000 documented individuals. 'Greek' in Greek Personal Names here refers not just to the modern country Greece, but to all regions where Greeks settled and left their imprint: throughout the Mediterranean, in the Balkans and Black Sea and in parts of the Middle East. It should not be forgotten that more than half the Roman empire was Greek-speaking.

The six published volumes have progressively documented the names, origins, dates, relationships and statuses of 300,944 ancient Greeks. Those volumes and one in preparation have covered all those regions of the Greek world where the evidence is predominantly written in Greek and Latin, except inland Asia Minor (the subject of the present proposal). LGPN is not just about names but about people. Every attested bearer of a name is included, so that entries vary greatly in length from single-bearer entries to lists running into three figures; there will be more than 400,000 individuals when the coverage of Asia Minor is completed. It is thus a fundamental tool for research into most aspects of social history.

The published LGPN volumes have already established themselves among the most essential items in any ancient historian's toolbox. Through a succession of conferences and publications, LGPN has encouraged a boom in onomastic awareness and research, among literary scholars and social historians as well as epigraphists. The first objective of the present application is to prepare an eighth volume covering inland Asia Minor (i.e . Northern Lycia, Pisidia, Phrygia, Galatia, Inner Pontus and Paphlagonia, Lycaonia, Cappadocia, and Commagene) and thus to bring a major phase of the project to a conclusion.

Inland Asia Minor poses intriguing questions in relation to which the evidence of names is vital. Greek influence made itself felt later here than on the coast, and indigenous traditions of culture and naming are correspondingly tenacious; on the other hand, an entirely new population group, the Galatians, entered the region in the third century BC. Huge Roman estates dominated much of the region and left many onomastic traces of the Romanization process; but it is also one of the great arenas for the study of the growth of Christianity in both its orthodox and 'heretical' forms. The present proposal incorporates a fourth conference-plus-volume, at which leading experts will tackle these issues with the aid of the new evidence being collected by the project.

By a happy chance, an AHRC-supported research project in Oxford (AH/GO10889/1: Dr P. Thonemann) has been preparing for publication the most important new cache of documents from the region to become available for many years. Close collaboration between the two enterprises will continue.

The value of such a work is cumulative. Increasing its scope by, say, 15% increases its value as a research tool by much more than 15%. But this added value can be fully realised only by making the data-base available for searching in as many ways as possible by as many constituencies as possible. We will expand what is already an important searchable website by creating interoperability with other major databases, so that, for example, a researcher looking at a name on a vase or coin will, at a click, be able to summon up all the other evidence for that name; or a student of an ancient site will likewise be able to call up all the evidence for names at the site.

The potential beneficiaries of the project's work beyond professional academics are:
1/ The general public inside this country
2/ Students at both school and university level
3/ The general public outside this country. Note in this connection that ancient Greek names are attested from the territories of modern Afghanistan, Albania, Bulgaria, Roumania, Croatia, Cyprus, Egypt, France , Georgia , Greece, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Jordan , Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Macedonia, Montenegro, Russian federation, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, UAE, United Kingdom, Uzbekistan, Yemen. The project relates to the early history of large swathes of the globe. The work of the Lexicon is very highly esteemed in Greece as a British contribution to its cultural history. Not only do many ordinary Greeks consult it to learn about the history of their own names, but the Lexicon has also received supplementary financial support for particular projects from the most prestigious institutions, the Archaeological Society of Athens and the Academy of Athens, as also from two banks. The present phase of the project, relating to Asia Minor, is of particular interest to modern Turkey.

At an economic level one should not forget the more than £300,000 of sales of the published volumes to date, mostly abroad. But the main impact of the Lexicon of Greek Personal Names will always be one of educational and cultural enrichment. Many individuals in this country, far more in some others, bear names that derive from ancient Greek names, often through the intermediary of a Christian saint. But, curiosity about one's own name aside, attention to names imports a new and vivid dimension to study of the ancient world at all levels. The concepts are not difficult or technical. It is exciting to learn that the most powerful politician in Athens in the 470s and 460s named a son 'Spartan', as if Mr Blair had named a daughter 'America'; looking at the mix of Greek, Carian and Persian names in an inscription from Herodotus' native city is a uniquely vivid way to come to appreciate the historian's multi-cultural world. But our project provides access not just to names but also to people, every single person from an identified place of origin whose name survives recorded in Greek over about 1300 years; it has been called the telephone directory of the Greek world. There is enormous public interest in the Greeks, and the challenge is to bring our work to the attention of all those who visit the classical galleries in museums, all those who holiday in classical lands, all those who engage with the classical world at school or college. Finally, in our multilinguistic and multicultural world (which is however also a world in which minority languages are endangered and even disappearing at frightening speed), much of enduring value can be expected to accrue from the close study of well-documented multilingual ancient societies which possessed complex and informative habits of name-formation.