Notes on slave names, ethnicity, and identity in Classical and Hellenistic Greece
Notes on slave names, ethnicity, and identity in Classical and Hellenistic Greece

Summary/Abstract: This article builds on recent studies of slave names in ancient Greece. First, it expands the scope beyond Attica and shows that in other regions of the Greek world too, foreign slaves were normally given Greek names that did not echo their ethnic origins. Second, it argues that for the minority of slaves that were given ethnic or foreign names, normally (but not invariably)these did reflect the true origins of the slave in question. Third, it argues that some slaves bore multiple names, and that some epigraphic genres are more likely to reflect names bestowed on slaves by their owners, whereas other genres are more likely to reflect the indigenous or preferred names of the slaves themselves.

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