Iranisches Personennamenbuch.

• Author: Klein, Jared S.

Iranisches Personennamenbuch, vol. 5, Iranische Namen in Nebeniiberlieferungen Indogermanischer Sprachen, fasc. 3: Iranian Personal Names in Armenian Collateral Tradition. By HRACH MARTIROSYAN. Osterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil-Hist. KI. Sitzungsberichte, vol. 912. Vienna: AUSTRIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES PRESS, 2021. Pp. 453. [euro]98 (paper); [euro]78.40 (ebook).

This factually dense book provides information about and etymological analysis of 872 onomastic entries involving Iranian names transmitted in Armenian literary and inscriptional sources up to 1300 CE. The actual coverage is even greater than this, however, because names of more recent attestation are included if they are likely to preserve the Namengut of earlier periods or to represent later forms of earlier names relevant to the philological or etymological discussion of the latter. The overwhelming majority of the names entered are those that belong to Armenians who have therefore adopted these names from Iranian sources, based on the centuries-long contacts between Armenians and Iranians.

Personal names play a larger role in Iranology than they would in other linguistic traditions, because of the relative paucity of literary sources, particularly in the Middle Iranian period, together with the fact that Iranian power and influence meant that large numbers of Iranians traveled widely in the Levant over a period of more than a millennium and in so doing left behind a record of their names in many traditions. This is why the individual so-called Nebeniiberlieferungen or collateral traditions are so important for Iranian studies. Moreover, the Iranian documentation of this period does not afford precise information about vocalism, so that any Iranian name found in a vowel-writing literary tradition (e.g., Avestan, Greek, Armenian) assumes immediate importance in the linguistic interpretation of these items. A massive amount of time, effort, and energy has been expended on Iranian onomastics, as can be seen from the fact that this book forms one fascicle of the fifth volume of the Iranisches Personnamenbuch (edited by Rildiger Schmitt, Heiner Eichner, Bert G. Fragner, and Velizar Sadovski), published in many fascicles since 1979. Moreover, these volumes themselves continue a long tradition of nearly 130 years of investigation into Iranian onomastics, going back to Ferdinand Justi in 1895 (Iranisches Namenbuch, Marburg [repr. Hildesheim, 2004]).

Following some general...