Identity, meaning, and accountability: Names and naming in Greek culture

A fascination with the varied significance of names and naming pervades almost all realms of Greek culture. Previous studies have tended to focus on the presence and functioning of names in one area of the literature or culture. I widen the scope of the inquiry and analyze texts and cultural practices from the philosophical, literary, and folk traditions, focussing on the various ways in which the Greeks conceived of the relation of the proper name and its bearer. The proper name often seems to describe or encapsulate part or all of the bearer, whether through its meaning or through its capacity to stand as a token for the whole bearer. I first look at the philosophical tradition and analyze Plato, Aristotle and Prodicus, who display varying degrees of difficulty accommodating proper names into their theories of language and meaning. For the literary tradition, I investigate the manner in which Homeric characters have names whose meanings often describe key elements of their personalities and of their role in the narrative. I then consider the use of the name as token for the bearer, using as evidence the folk rituals of curse tablets and sepulchral inscriptions. Both practices rely on similar conceptions of names, but put these ideas to very different uses. I conclude by considering to what extent the Greeks believed in a significant correlation between the name and the bearer. I conclude that they maintain apparently contradictory beliefs about the descriptive power of proper names