PIE Personal Names, even Surnames (was: speaking PIE)

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Gordon Barlow" <barlow@...> wrote:

> The statement that "between late antiquity and ... the year 1000...

the vast

> majority of Europeans bore a single name [each]" is not only

unproven and

> unprovable, it is based on the false premise that it is knowable.

All but a

> few of the very few names recorded during that period - and indeed

during

> the period between "late antiquity" and the Year Dot - are of persons
> prominent in clan-politics. To those millions living in hereditary

clans in

> their clan territories, clan-names were available as surnames, whether
> permanent ones or not. In fluid societies, individuals of low

social rank

> (including slaves, soldiers, migrants, drifters) might remove from their
> clans and adopt new identifiers, permanent or temporary. The proposal
> (offered by default) that clan-identifiers never existed for those

below the

> upper classes in pre-civilisation times is - excuse me -

presumptuous in the

> extreme.

This proposal was not made. The Roman gentile names would immediately
suggest that it was false - and indeed their use is antiquity is why
Brian said "late antiquity", when the Roman system had collapsed.

You are talking at cross-purposes, and that should be acknowledged.
You condemned the etymologising of *modern* surnames, and Brian
pointed out that these surnames are indeed quite recent. Brian was
quite reasonably irritated by your dismissal of such work.

A discussion of ancient clan-based naming would be interesting - we
have both the Goidelic and Roman systems, and there is evidence of
Greek clans scattered across ancient Greek cities.

Richard.