--- title: "Personal Names in the Aramaic Inscriptions of Hatra — Simonson 2020" description: "This text is not a technical paper." authors: ["Brandon Simonson"] year: 2020 venue: "Names 68" source: "http://ans-names.pitt.edu/ans/article/view/2222" doi: "10.1080/00277738.2020.1771146" licence: "CC BY (journal licence per DOAJ; Names)" licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License" canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/simonson-2020-personal-names-aramaic-inscriptions-hatra/" --- [Elamur Research](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/simonson-2020-personal-names-aramaic-inscriptions-hatra/) [home](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/) / [2020](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2020/page/7/) / Personal Names in the Aramaic Inscriptions of Hatra # Personal Names in the Aramaic Inscriptions of Hatra **Authors:** Brandon Simonson · **Year:** 2020 · **Venue:** Names 68 · **Licence:** [CC BY (journal licence per DOAJ; Names)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) **Links:** [Publisher's page](https://doi.org/10.1080/00277738.2020.1771146) · [PDF](https://ans-names.pitt.edu/ans/article/download/2222/2221) · [DOI 10.1080/00277738.2020.1771146](https://doi.org/10.1080/00277738.2020.1771146) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W3032909047) **Citations:** 0 citations (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14) ## Summary This text is not a technical paper. It is Brandon Simonson's review of Enrico Marcato's book on the personal names recorded in Hatra's Aramaic inscriptions (Edizioni Ca' Foscari, 2018, open access). Hatra was a trading city between the Parthian and Roman empires, and its name stock blends several cultures. The reference work it had relied on, Abbadi's 1983 name book, had become outdated: the number of inscriptions has almost doubled since then, and knowledge of Aramaic has improved. Marcato's book has three parts: - a catalogue of every personal name, with transliteration, candidate meanings, variant readings, etymology, cognate parallels and attestations; - a linguistic analysis covering origin, spelling, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantic classes and divine-name elements; - a concordance mapping its entries to Abbadi's. The book's main finding is that Arab groups strongly shaped Hatrene culture. Simonson praises the book as an accessible model for documenting names in a multicultural community. He also proposes that some divine elements usually tied to the sun god Šamaš could instead point to the moon god Sîn. ## Key points - The catalogue covers 376 personal names. By origin: - Aramaic: 167 (44.4%) - Arabian: 105 (27.9%) - Iranian: 29 (7.7%) - Greek: 8 (2.1%) - Akkadian-related: 7 (1.9%) - unclassified: 60 (16%) - Compared with Abbadi, the concordance shows 136 newly added names, 11 readings made more cautious and 39 made more certain. - The semantic classification follows Martin Noth's 1928 scheme rather than Rainer Albertz's later revision. It is deliberately kept coarse because many names remain ambiguous. - Names built on Hadad are filed under three separate deity forms (Adda, Addu, Hadad), which keeps the different cultural sources visible. - Simonson suggests re-reading several names (e.g., "servant of", "gave", "healed" types) as referring to Sîn rather than Šamaš. ## Interesting ideas - Publishing a concordance against the previous edition shows which items are new, which became less certain and which became more certain, so readers can audit every change. - Spelling variants of one deity are kept as distinct headings instead of being merged, because each variant carries its own origin. - About a sixth of the names go into an explicit "unclassified" bucket, and the taxonomy is kept shallow where interpretations are uncertain, rather than forcing labels. - Each catalogue entry keeps several possible meanings and alternative readings side by side, each backed by parallels from related languages. ## For Mova How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests: - **I1** (learn): Each treebank or silver-data release could ship a diff that tags sentences as added, confidence-lowered or confidence-raised, making regressions traceable. - **I2** (world): Entity nodes could keep surface variants as separate linked forms with provenance, rather than collapsing them early into one canonical name. - **I3** (frames): Role assignment could allow an honest "unresolved" label instead of forcing a VerbNet role when the evidence is weak, which keeps explanations truthful. - **I4** (tokens): Lexicon entries for proper names could store multiple analyses with supporting evidence, so later stages can pick one from context instead of inheriting a premature single choice. *Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.* Fields: [Linguistics & languages](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/linguistics/) Topics: [🕎 Hebrew & Aramaic](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/hebrew-aramaic/) · [🐪 Semitic languages](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/semitic-languages/) ## Institutions - [Boston University](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/boston-university/) — University, Boston, United States · 7 works · 2,992 citations ## Cite Cite as: Brandon Simonson. 2020. Personal Names in the Aramaic Inscriptions of Hatra. Names 68. The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. ```bibtex @inproceedings{simonson2020personal, title = {{Personal Names in the Aramaic Inscriptions of Hatra}}, author = {Brandon Simonson}, booktitle = {Names 68}, year = {2020}, doi = {10.1080/00277738.2020.1771146}, url = {https://doi.org/10.1080/00277738.2020.1771146} } ``` - [← previous Linguistic Features in Automatic Sarcasm Detection](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/ducret-2020-linguistic-features-automatic-sarcasm-detection/) - [next → Problematic Terminology of the Manna Pericope (Exod 16:14-15) in the Light of Medieval Jewish Commentators and Biblical Hebrew Philology](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/dihi-2020-problematic-terminology-manna-pericope-exod/) - [↑ back to papers of 2020](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2020/page/7/)