What was the origin of names like Plato or Aristotle or Socrates. Were these birth names or name they chose for themselves. If they were birth names, what do they mean?
Aristotle in Greek is Αριστοτελης (Aristoteles) which means “the best purpose”, derived from αριστος (aristos) “best” and τελος (telos) “purpose, aim”.
Plato’s name is a little uncertain.
[QUOTE=Wikipedia]
According to Diogenes Laërtius, the philosopher was named Aristocles (Ἀριστοκλῆς) after his grandfather. It was common in Athenian society for boys to be named after grandfathers (or fathers). But there is only one inscriptional record of an Aristocles, an early Archon of Athens in 605/4 BCE. There no record of a line of Aristocles’s from this one that culminate in one who was father of Plato’s father Ariston. However, if Plato was not named after an ancestor named Plato (there is no record of one), then the origin of his renaming as Plato becomes a conundrum. Diogenes’ sources account for this fact by claiming that his wrestling coach, Ariston of Argos, dubbed him Platon, meaning “broad,” on account of his robust figure[23] or that Plato derived his name from the breadth (πλατύτης, platytēs) of his eloquence, or else because he was very wide (πλατύς, platýs) across the forehead.[24] Recently a scholar has argued that even the name Aristocles for Plato was a much later invention. [25] Although Plato was a fairly common name, (31 instances are known from Athens alone[26]), the name does not occur in Plato’s known family line. The fact that the philosopher in his maturity called himself Plato is indisputable, but the origin of this naming must remain moot unless the record is made to yield more information
[/QUOTE]
From the article on Plato here:
ETA: Whoops, missed Socrates on your list.
Socrates is from the Greek name Σωκρατης (Sokrates), which was derived from σως (sos) “whole, unwounded, safe” and κρατος (kratos) “power”.
Their mums and dads gave them to them.
Well, that wasn’t difficult, was it ?
It sound like they used the native Indian process from which we get “Sitting Buil” etc.
Which reminds of the punchline to a great joke
“But tell me Two Dogs Fucking, why do you ask?”
Are there any modern languages that derive their names in such a way?
Many Western names are derived from either Latin or Germanic patronyms that in turn meant things way back when. E.g. John, from Iohannes, from the Hebrew Yochanan by way of Greek & Latin, originally meaning “G-d is gracious”.
Last names are typically either location-, profession- or appearance-based ; because that’s what people used before the codification of last names to differentiate between the 50 "John"s in the village - so you had John (the) Baker, John (who came from) TownNextDoor, John the son of John, John (the) Small etc…
In China they did/do things a bit different : they only have a small handful of *last *names, but go hogwild on the first names, of which there is a very wide variety. But there too you have many equivalents of “Blacksmith Lee”, “Pretty Huang”, “Han from beyond the big hill” and so on.
For example, Deng Xiaoping’s name means “Small Peaceful Deng” (Deng itself meaning hillock or mound), a name he chose for himself. His birth name was Deng Xiansheng, or First/Early Sage Deng.
No, their μητέρες (mi̱téres) and πατέρες (patéres) gave them to them. 