Names
The use of two-word compound words for personal names, typically but not always ascribing some noble or heroic feat to their bearer, is so common in Indo-European languages that it seems certainly inherited. These names are often of the class of compound words that in Sanskrit are called bahuvrihi compounds.
They are found in the Celtic region (Dumnorix: "king of the world"; Kennedy: "ugly head"), in Indo-Aryan languages (Asvaghosa: "tamer of horses"); in Greek (Socrates: "good ruler", Hipparchos: "horse master"; Cleopatra: "from famous lineage") in Slavic languages (Vladimir: "great ruler"); in the Germanic languages (Alfred: "elf-counsel"; Godiva: "gift of God"), and in the Anatolian languages (Piyama-Radu: "gift of the devotee?").
Patronymics such as Gustafsson ("son of Gustaf"), MacDonald ("son of Donald") are also frequently encountered in Indo-European languages.
Read more about this topic: Proto-Indo-European Society
Famous quotes containing the word names:
“Men have sometimes exchanged names with their friends, as if they would signify that in their friend each loved his own soul.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The pangs of conscience, where are the pangs of conscience? Orestes and Clytemnestra, Reinhold doesn’t even know the names of those fine folk. He simply hopes, heartily and sincerely, that Franz is dead as a doornail and won’t be found.”
—Alfred Döblin (1878–1957)
“If goodness were only a theory, it were a pity it should be lost to the world. There are a number of things, the idea of which is a clear gain to the mind. Let people, for instance, rail at friendship, genius, freedom, as long as they will—the very names of these despised qualities are better than anything else that could be substituted for them, and embalm even the most envenomed satire against them.”
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830)