Introduction

The Aramaic onomasticon found in Babylonian sources linguistically belongs to the West Semitic languages while it is written in cuneiform script used to express Late Babylonian Akkadian, an East Semitic language (see Figure 8.1). Among the languages classified as West Semitic, four are recognisable in the Late Babylonian onomasticon: Arabic names, generally viewed as representing the Central Semitic branch; Phoenician; Hebrew (or Canaanite); and Aramaic names representing its Northwest Semitic subgroup.Footnote ¹

Figure 8.1

A family tree model of Semitic languages.

(drawing by Rieneke Sonnevelt)

Aramaic names make up the largest part of the West Semitic onomasticon in the Neo- and Late Babylonian documentation. They will be the focus of this chapter. Chapter 9 deals with Hebrew names, Chapter 10 with Phoenician names, and Chapter 11 with Arabic names from this period. The Aramaic onomasticon of the preceding Neo-Assyrian era, which has been researched by Fales, is not included here.Footnote ² A given name may be recognised as Aramaic on the basis of patterns and trends regarding patronym, the occurrence of an Aramaic deity, and the socio-economic context of the attestation. Despite the fact that these factors provide valuable background information (see section on ‘Aramaic Names in Babylonian Sources’), the most secure way of deciding on the Aramaic nature of a name is based on linguistic criteria:

1. - phonological: phonemes of Semitic roots are represented in a way specific for Aramaic;

2. - lexical: words are created from roots that solely appear in Aramaic;

3. - morphological: forms and patterns used are peculiar for Aramaic;

4. - structural: names are constructed with, for instance, Aramaic verbal components.Footnote ³

Opinions differ as regards the nature of the Aramaic language in Babylonia during the Neo-Babylonian era. Aramaic attestations from this timeframe are – together with those from the preceding Neo-Assyrian period – variously evaluated as belonging to Old Aramaic as found in sources from Aramaean city states, as manifestations of local and independent dialects, or as (precursors of) Achaemenid Imperial (or Official) Aramaic.Footnote ⁴

Defining the variety of Aramaic used in Babylonia is hindered by the fact that direct evidence from this area is generally scarce and textual witnesses from its state administration, which presumably was bilingual Akkadian–Aramaic, are non-extant. Aramaic texts mainly appear as brief epigraphs written on cuneiform clay tablets.Footnote ⁵ Moreover, a small number of alphabetic texts were impressed into bricks by those working on royal buildings in Babylon.Footnote ⁶

Chronologically, the major part of the Aramaic onomasticon appears in cuneiform texts dating to the latter half of the fifth century – a period in which the use of Aramaic as chancellery language of the Achaemenid Empire seems to have been established in all parts of its vast territory. Achaemenid Imperial Aramaic is attested in a large variety of literary genres across socio-economic domains and is written in alphabetic script on various media, such as papyri, ostraca, funerary stones, and coins.Footnote ⁷ Overall, the orthography of this language variety is marked by consistency (especially in administrative letters), its syntax displays influences from Persian and Akkadian, and its lexicon contains an abundance of loanwords from various languages.Footnote ⁸

Aramaic Names in Babylonian Sources

Aramaic names can be found in cuneiform economic documents from all over Babylonia, but they appear most frequently in texts from the villages Yāhūdu, Našar, and Bīt-Abī-râm, dating to the sixth and early fifth centuries,Footnote ⁹ and in the extensive Murašû archive originating from the southern town of Nippur and its surroundings, which covers the second half of the fifth century.Footnote ¹⁰ By contrast, the proportion of West Semitic names in city-based cuneiform archives is relatively marginal: about 2 per cent of the c. 50,000 individuals appearing in this text corpus bear an Aramaic name if the Murašû documentation is disregarded; this amounts to 2.5 per cent if the latter archive is included.Footnote ¹¹ The proportion of Aramaic names in the Murašû archive is ten times higher than the norm (see Figure 8.2).Footnote ¹²

Figure 8.2

Distribution of names in the Murašû archive from Nippur.

One of the reasons behind the marked difference in the proportion of non-Babylonian names between the rural archives and the Babylonian sources in general is the fact that the former are characterised by less formative influence – and thus representation – of Babylonian elites, who formed a relatively homogenous social group. They lived in the city; were directly or indirectly connected to its institutions, most notably the temples; and virtually always bore Babylonian personal names, patronyms, and family names (see Chapter 1).Footnote ¹³ Unsurprisingly, they appear as protagonists in the urban documentation, while individuals with non-Babylonian names tend to have the passive role of witnesses.Footnote ¹⁴

Onomastic diversity thus correlates with a decidedly rural setting. This is underlined by the fact that Murašû documents not written up in Nippur, but in settlements located in its vicinity, display larger proportions of both parties and witnesses with non-Babylonian names.Footnote ¹⁵ Likewise, texts from the rural settlements of Yāhūdu, Našar, and Bīt-Abī-râm contain a substantive amount of West Semitic names. Indeed, the multilingual situation in Babylonia’s south-central (or possibly south-eastern) region, whence these two cuneiform corpora originate,Footnote ¹⁶ already stood out during earlier centuries. Letters in the archive of Nippur’s ‘governor’ written between c. 755 and 732 BCE attest to the connections between powerful leaders of Aramaean tribes and feature many Aramaic-named individuals, as well as Aramaisms.Footnote ¹⁷ Moreover, a letter dated to king Assurbanipal’s reign (seventh century BCE) mentions speakers of multiple different languages living in the Nippur area (roughly indicated by the brackets in Figure 8.3).Footnote ¹⁸

Figure 8.3

Nippur and its hinterland.

(drawn by Rieneke Sonnevelt, adapted from Zadok 1978, 332)

Various forms of migration contributed to the multi-ethnic character of the population in this region. First, non-Babylonian sections – among which were Aramaean groups – migrated into the territory east of the Tigris (the area indicated by the arrows in Figure 8.3).Footnote ¹⁹ Second, the diverse populace was a result of forced migration. For instance, the Babylonian king Nabopolassar (626–605 BCE) took many prisoners of war – most of them Aramaeans – from settlements in upper Mesopotamia and the middle Euphrates region and relocated them to the Nippur area in 616 BCE. Not long before, Nippur itself had been an Assyrian town where a garrison was stationed; it was only besieged and conquered between 623 and 621 BCE. Campaigns led by subsequent kings, most notably Nebuchadnezzar II (604–562 BCE), resulted in deportations of communities from Syria and the Levant and their resettlement in the same region around Nippur.Footnote ²⁰ The state provided the deportees with fields and in return levied taxes and/or rents and conscripted the landholders as troops. The process is documented in its early stages in the cuneiform texts from Yāhūdu and its environs. Also, the Murašû archive depicts individuals active in this so-called land-for-service system.Footnote ²¹ Due to these migratory flows, not only the onomasticon is diverse: many toponyms in this region are non-Akkadian or Akkadian – West Semitic hybrids as well. They may refer to Aramaean tribes, eponymous forefathers, or places of origins in Syria or the Levant.Footnote ²² Finally, Aramaic epigraphs are quite well-attested in these archives.

During the Achaemenid period, the southern region functioned as a passageway between the Persian heartland and the Empire’s western provinces. Through the Kabaru Canal the Babylonian waterways were directly connected with Susa, the Persian capital in Elam. Except for thus being of geopolitical importance, this area hosted travellers from Babylonia and far beyond who began the last stage of their trip to the capital here, upon changing boats in the settlement of Bāb-Nār-Kabari.Footnote ²³

Spelling and Normalisation

The normalisation of West Semitic names written in Babylonian Akkadian, for which no academic standard has been formulated, is challenging. First, it is not always straightforward whether a name is Akkadian or Aramaic; for instance, ^Iba-ni-a can be read as Akkadian Bānia and as West Semitic Banī, a hypocoristic form of the sentence name ‘DN-established’. Second, there are many ways to approach the transcription of Aramaic names, based on the question of whether an attempt should be made to reconstruct the characteristics of an Aramaic name and, if so, to what extent. This could pertain to relatively straightforward issues, such as phonemes not represented in Akkadian (for instance, the gutturals) or those rendered differently (for instance, /w/ written /m/, as visible in the Judean theophoric element Yāma). However, it also relates to features such as vowel quality, vowel length, and stress, which are often not easy – or are downright impossible – to reconstruct due to incongruity of the writing systems and the inconsistency in which Aramaic names are converted into Akkadian.Footnote ²⁴ Therefore, taking the Akkadian spelling as a point of departure and including only the most basic features rendered by it in a relatively consistent manner is my preferred modus operandi for transcription.

At the same time, some degree of harmonisation is necessary as, for instance, the spelling of the perfect in the Aramaic name DN-natan shows: ^IDN-na-tan-nu/-ni/-na (the final CV-sign merely indicates that the previous syllable is stressed). Abstraction on the basis of the Aramaic verbal form avoids a plethora of names that are in fact orthographic varieties. Moreover, although vowel length is not included in transcription when uncertain, a frequent and clear trend is taken into account: as the final long vowel of the perfect 3.sg. m. of verbs ending in ˀ/y/h is nearly always represented, the transcription of, for example, ^IDN-ba-na-ˀ is DN-banā. These examples demonstrate that there will always be a margin of error and that a hybrid transcription is inevitable – something that does not seem unfitting in view of the sources.Footnote ²⁵

Typology of Aramaic Names

Naming Practices

As regards naming practice, it is striking that Babylonian theophoric elements appearing in the Aramaic onomasticon are not the ones prominent in contemporaneous Babylonian names. For instance, hardly any Aramaic names in the Murašû documentation contain the theophoric element Enlil, while this Babylonian deity enjoyed immense popularity in the Nippur area at the time.Footnote ⁶² This also is the case for Enlil’s son Ninurta (attested only once) and for Marduk, Nergal, and Sîn. Babylonian gods that are found in greater numbers in Aramaic names are Nabû, who takes second position after Tammeš in Nippur’s Aramaic onomasticon, as well as Bēl and Nanāya. Interestingly, Nabû primarily appears in patronyms, which indicates a decline of his prevalence.Footnote ⁶³

In feminine names, a tendency of different order stands out. Although suffixes -t, -at, -īt, and -ī/ē are attested, there seems to have been a strong preference for feminine names ending in -ā:Footnote ^{64 f}Barukā ‘Blessed’ (^fba-ru-ka-ˀ), ^fGubbā ‘Cistern’ (^fgu-ub-ba-a), ^fḪannā ‘Gracious’ (^fḫa-an-na-a), ^fNasikat ‘Chieftess’ (^fna-si-ka-tu₄), ^fDidīt ‘Favourite’ (^fdi-di-ti), and ^fḪinnī ‘Gracious’ (^fḫi-in-ni-ia).

Tools for Identifying Aramaic Names in Cuneiform Sources

Various Aramaic verbs have surfaced in the examples. A more extensive – although not exhaustive – overview of verbs commonly attested in Aramaic names is presented in Table 8.1.

Nouns that regularly appear in nominal sentence names are presented in Table 8.2.Footnote ⁶⁵

Nouns that typically appear in compound names are given in Table 8.3.

The outline of elements of which Aramaic names may consist (presented in the section ‘Typology of Aramaic Names’) and these tables may give a taste of what such names could look like. If one suspects a name to be Aramaic, either the indices of Reference ZadokRan Zadok (1977, 339–81) may be checked, or Reference Zadok, Stökl and WaerzeggersZadok 2014, which includes attestations from later publications as well (the latter in a searchable PDF). As names have not been transcribed, use the Akkadian spelling for a search.