Demokrates the democrat?

This paper addresses a topic of central interest in Ancient Greek History, the emergence of the language and ideology of 'democracy'. The relatively early existence of the name 'Demokrates' has long been thought by historians to be a crucial piece of evidence for that emergence, but this paper shows that far from connoting 'democrat', the name originally connoted 'one who exercises power among the people'. Only rather later, after the language of democracy was itself coined, could the name have begun to be associated with democracy. This name also supplies important evidence for an underappreciated type of onomastic change: change in the connotation of a name over time, influenced by changes in other aspects of the language and culture in which it is used