There are only a few Assyrian kings whose names are known to most of the general public. Tiglath-Pileser qualifies because he is mentioned in the New Testament (in Chronicles).
But why the hyphen? There were no hyphens in Assyrian, or Aramaic, or Greek. Long names were common - see Shalmaneser and Sennacherib - so they didn’t need to be broken up.
I can’t think of any other well-known ancient name that has a hyphen, although you can find them in archaeological writings of the lesser known. The Babylonians also have a few hyphenated kings, but you’d have to be a scholar to recognize them.
So how did the hyphen get there? Whose transliteration is responsible? Why him and none of the others?
I want to know howcum Mark Antony is the only Roman who gets a name that sounds like a modern name, when it ought to have been Marcus Antonius. Common use by Shaekspeare and others, I suppose, is the reason, although why only M.A. got singled out for this, I don’t know.
Tiglath probably got the same treatment. I’ve seen other Mesopotamian names written with hyphens, but generally it’s the unhyphenated forms that get used widely.
It’s not just names from the ancient Near East. I’ve been looking into Hiawatha (as I’ve posted on several threads), and many soyurces use a highly hyphenated form of his name,. although “Hiawatha” is by far the most common.
You’ve got me on the others, but I’ve never heard of or met a modern-day (or Elizabethan) “Ovid”. Most Romans, I think you’ll agree, have their names normally rendered in the original form (even if not in the most complete form) – Julius Caesar. Gaius Marius. Tiberius. Nero. Plautus. Marcus Aurelius.
Howcum Marcus Antonius is Mark Antony and Marcus Aurelius isn’t Mark Aury?
Common English usage is “Cicero”, now. But through the 19th and early 20th century, he was “Tully”
You’ve never heard of Ovid, the writer of the Metamorphisis?
In addition, a few emperors got the shortened name. Domitian (Titus Flavius Domitianus), Trajan (Marcus Ulpius Trajanus), Hadrian (Publius Hadrianus), Gordian (Gordianus), Phillip the Arab (Phillipus), Hostilian (Hostilianus), Aemilian (-us), Valerian (-us), Aurelian (-us), Numerian (-us), Diocletian, Maximum, Julian, etc.
And, most famously, Constantine. And, the most famous non-emperor of the bunch, Pompey.
My guess is because it’s expressed as two seperate words in the original Hebrew Biblical text (maybe that’s how it was in the original Assyrian, I don’t know their naming conventions), whereas Nebucadnezzar was only ever one in the original Hebrew.
The same sort of hyphenation can be found for the Babylonian king Evil-Merodach. Again, two distinct words in the original Hebrew.
And I knew that of course. I wonder why my fingers didn’t? :smack:
This seems a likely explanation. I guess the question then becomes, are all two-named kings represented by a hyphen or are some given two names? And if the latter, why?
I’m cudgelling my brains, now, trying to remember where I have heard that one … I’m pretty sure it’s pre-19th century, certainly. (But undeniably modern English, if early modern. So that puts it anywhere between Shakespeare and Jane Austen. Which is still a pretty wide range. This is going to bother me until I remember, I just know it.)
Here’s an online version of a book by Roger Ascham (1515-1568) which refers to Cicero as “Tully” or “Tullie”. But that’s not where I came across it first. Still doing the brain-cudgelling thing.
I saw the bolded part…I just didn’t understand it, because nobody in the thread was claiming that “Ovid” was a name given to people today, just that we call the ancient Roman writer “Ovid”.
My point was that “Mark” was a modern name (“Marcus”, I realize is, as well. I know a Marcus, but the point is that “Mark” isn’t an anciernt Roman name), as are “Horace” and others, but “Ovid” certainly isn’t. What makes “Mark Antony” stand out is that it’s a modern form for an ancient individual. If you don’t understand that, you don’t get my point. And so for a lot of the other “shortened” forms of ancient names – they’re shortened, but certainly they don’t stand out as modern forms, since no one calls anyone Trajan.
I have to admit that I missed “Constantine”, as well.
I haven’t heard them in English, but I have heard tons of those names in Portuguese. The name Julio is pretty common in Latin America. I have a cousin named Tullio, one named Caio, another one named Publio, and I’ve met several Flavios.
In English, we do see variations on those names for women, Portia, Julia, Lucretia and others that I can’t think of at the moment.