Uses of names and variation in the Greek tradition

Abstract

For the ancient Greeks, the relationship between names and the things they designate was of considerable importance, found in various forms and in different kinds of text throughout ancient Greek history. From the «whatever name you want to be called» in hymns to the gods, to philosophical discussions about the connection between words and concepts, between names and things. Both these concerns are found throughout antiquity. The etymologizations that we often find in poetry, as far back as the Homeric tradition, are another aspect of the interest aroused by names, as is the frequency of speaking names and the attention paid to the etymologies of characters’ names. In all these cases, the assumption is that the there is some sort of relationship between name and thing named that is not purely arbitrary. In this paper we will present these various phenomena in relation to what is maybe the most defining characteristic of the Greek tradition, variability, and also in connection with the fact that one of the words for ‘character’ in Aristotle’s Poetics is precisely ὄνομα.