BYZANTINE Character Names

[Anastasios]

Hi,
I have tried to make the byzantine names, but even if I follow the guide to create them I failled, thats why I am waitting your patch.
Can someone tell me when are u going to release it ?
the other thing is be carefull with the byzantine names
example the name Anastasios
was written "Anastasios" only for the priests
in the other "Anastasius" was written for Emperors
like Flavius Anastasius or Anastasius I (c. 430–July 9, 518)
link : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anastasius_I_(emperor)

the emperos prefered to put at the end of the name "u" instead of "o"
if u need any help for your mod I have some free time.

[deRougemont]

Hi,
I have tried to make the byzantine names, but even if I follow the guide to create them I failled, thats why I am waitting your patch.
Can someone tell me when are u going to release it ?
the other thing is be carefull with the byzantine names
example the name Anastasios
was written "Anastasios" only for the priests
in the other "Anastasius" was written for Emperors
like Flavius Anastasius or Anastasius I (c. 430–July 9, 518)
link : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anastasius_I_(emperor)

the emperos prefered to put at the end of the name "u" instead of "o"
if u need any help for your mod I have some free time.

I'm not sure when I will release the new Byzantine names. The fellow who was editing the list for me is away to work on a greek island and can't finish until he comes back home. I will check with him to see when he might be done with it. Also, I'm aware the current list is inaccurate, that's why I haven't included it in the download until Giorgos-Zahos finishes his editing work. Sorry for the inconvenience.

[Zadig]

Try panzatopoulos as a sirname if u want

[Basilakes En Strategoisin]

Hello, fellow byzantinophiles!

I chanced upon this most interesting thread and decided to pop in with a few comments. If I seem annoying, just give me a kick in the behind and I'll be off

First, it should of course be said that, as long as there is some logic behind it, no method of transcribing/translitterating Greek names into Latin letters is more wrong or more correct than others. A transcription is always a compromise of some kind. What must be decided is: how consistent do you want to be? Because if, for example, the letter beta is transcribed as "b" in Basileios while it is simultaneously transcribed "v" in Tiverios; and similarly, if kappa is written "c" in Constantinos but "k" in Kostas (shorter form of the same name) the result is that individually the names still look good, but you can forget about historical accuracy.

As far as I know, there is no official, international standard for transcribing Greek, and because of this individual Greeks even nowadays have to decide personally how they spell their name when Greek letters are unavailable. The main difficulty lies in the fact that the Latin alphabet itself has no "standard pronunciation" but is used by a vast amount of different languages with the same letters representing very different sounds.

There are, generally speaking, four common ways of approaching the transcription of Greek names into Latin. The first of these is the most obvious, in which the names are simply transcribed according to the modern pronunciation. The catch, of course, is that the transcription will only be valid for a specific language: For example, the Greek version of the latin Georgius would be transcribed by an Englishman as “Yeoryios”, by a Finn as “Jeorjios” and so on. Funnily enough, this name is usually written Georgios (right?) in Latin letters, even though strictly speaking this should result in an English mispronunciation – since the “g” and “gi” in the name are not pronounced in the same way as in the English “George” but as practically the same as the consonantal “i”-sound for which English uses “y”. The same applies to the name that is written either Giannis or Yannis – these are the exact same name in Greek, and the different spellings result from different approaches to the transcription. The former tries to stick to the letters, since the letter gamma (the “g”) by itself is close to the English “g”, although when followed by either “i” or “e” (as in this case) it becomes a consonantal “i”. The form Yannis, on the other hand, attempts to convey the pronunciation in an Englishman’s terms, but sacrifices the exact correspondence of letter-to-letter which the first transcription seeks to preserve. I assume, though, that since English is the working language of TWC, an Anglo-friendly transcription would suffice.
According to this transcription method, you would write the names as, for example, Nikiphoros – Vasilios – Stavrakios.

The second approach, which I do not recommend, is one used by classicists where they transcribe the names as per the presumed ancient pronunciation (ancient meaning Classical Attic, 5th cent. BC), for example Nikephoros – Basileios – Staurakios. This looks cool enough but is rather inappropriate for a game set in late medieval times. (OT: this is actually the way my username is transcribed. In method #1 it could be written Vasilakis En Stratiyisin)

The third and approach is transcription into the Latin language, taking advantage of the close relation between Latin and Greek; this is the way Greek names were spelt in Early Republican Rome when the Greek and Roman peoples first came into major contact and, as far as I know, retained in medieval times, although I’d assume various confusions and misspellings had to be common. This doesn’t look familiar to a Greek but it has certain advantages. It looks cool (this is just my opinion), it is an established practice, and is probably the way the Byzantines themselves would have transcribed their name if they corresponded with westerners in Latin (though I’m no expert here). This method yields names like Nicephorus – Basilius – Stauracius. You notice the latin “c” in place of the “k” (which the Romans didn’t have in their alphabet – c was their equivalent), as well as the Greek former diphthong “ei” being already transcribed as a simple “i” (which it came to be pronounced like, as any Greek knows). Notice also the Latin termination –us for the Greek –os: historically, both languages had nouns with the ending –os, which changed in early Latin to be pronounced –us. The similarity of Latin and Greek nouns enabled the Romans to easily write Greek names with Latin inflectional endings. Note, Anastasios, that this is the reason the name of the emperor Anastasius (or Anastasios if you want) is commonly written with –us: because he reigned in a time when Latin was still the official language of the Eastern empire, even if its use was rapidly diminishing and even the old Latin imperial titles were abandoned by the later emperor Heraclius (Or Herakleios or Iraklios, whatever way you want it spelled). Greek names that actually end in -us are rare (Oedipus, or Idipous as I'd write it with method #1, is one). Then there's of course a bunch of names ending in -eus in traditional spelling (using method #2 or #3) such as Achilleus, Odysseus, Atreus. In these the "u" has become "f" by medieval times, and they would be written Akhillephs, Odissephs, Atrephs.

The fourth and rather common method is equivalent to method #3 with the exception that several names (which follow no logical pattern and have to be learnt by heart) are transcribed in a way more familiar to English readers, so that Ioannis / Ioannes / Iohannes is instead changed into the English equivalent of the same (biblical) name: John. Other such “pet forms” which often mean simply leaving out the inflectional ending -os include Constantine, Isaac, Diocletian, Hadrian and Trajan. With these four methods we thus have the name of a 10th century warrior emperor spelled either Ioannis Tzimiskis, Ioannes Tzimiskes, Iohannes Tzimisces or John Tzimisces. The last one you are most likely to find in a history book.

I apologise for the extremely long rant (I have a passion for the Greek language) and even going close to major OT at times, but what I was trying to point out is that whatever the method of transcription, there is no way of avoiding confusion about the actual pronunciation of the Greek names. In this way, the absolute historical accuracy sought in this project is impossible to achieve, if historical accuracy means making available to everyone who downloads the mod a set of transcribed Greek names which enable any Englishman to pronounce them as if they were Greek. (Pronunciation’s a job for the Xenophonia folks ).


For this reason, I simply suggest that it would be a good idea to first create a set of clear guidelines for transcribing the names and then proceed to treat every name by the same rules. Given that the game takes place so late in medieval times and that you seem intent on doing away with the old schoolbook transcriptions (which in the English world mostly means method #4), I suggest going for method #1 in a way that aims for the least confusing result for an English-speaking MTW player. This would probably mean something like this:

(I apologise for not having a Greek font available, this would be a lot easier with one)

Alpha – A
Vita – V
Gamma – G (but Y when followed by E or I, and in the latter case the I is not written)
Delta – D
Epsilon – E
Zita – Z
Ita – I
Thita – TH
Iota – I
Kappa – K
Lamda – L
Mi – M
Ni – N
Xi – X
Omikron – O
Pi – P
Ro – R
Sigma – S
Tau – T
Ipsilon – I
Phi – PH
Khi – KH
Psi – PS
Omega – O

(former) diphthongs:
Alpha-Iota – E
Omikron-Iota – I
Epsilon-Iota – I
Omikron-Ipsilon – OU
Ipsilon-Iota – I

consonant combinations:
Gamma-Gamma – NG
Gamma-Kappa – NK

Most of this is just plain obvious and already done this way in the text file Giorgos-Zahos posted here, but with a couple of changes:

Alpha-Iota – E means that instead of Aikaterini we have Ekaterini, because that’s how the former AI diphthong is pronounced. It’s consistent with writing I for what used to be EI.

Using KH instead of CH for the letter Khi and K instead of C for Kappa is better, I think, since it is less confusing to English speakers. “Ch” in English often represents a voiceless affricate, think of words like chip, chin, cheek, which is not the Greek pronunciation of Khi. If we could assume everyone reading this was German then ch would be appropriate. Similarly, in English C stands for S in some cases, so K is safer (for example it is pronounced Kirillos not Sirillos; if this is written with C it is confusing).


Using I instead of Y for Ipsilon is simply being consistent and transcribing all the Greek ways of writing the “i”-sound with one letter, but I suppose it wouldn’t cause any confusion to write it with Y instead, so that we have Amyntas – Kyrillos – Dionysios. Similarly, it might look better to give up the "ph" transcription of Phi altogether and transcribe it everywhere simply as "f" - Apokafkhos, Nikiforos, Fokas and so on.


To finish my text here are some parts of your list, from Giorgos-Zahos’s txt file, where I have added my transcription with method #1 for comparison. I again apologise if I seem intrusive, I am simply trying to be of help, being a fan of both Greek culture and MTWII. Hopefully this is of some use to you. If you wish, I can of course help in transliterating more names.

# Aemilianos – Emilianos
# Alexandros – Alexandros
# Amyntas – Amintas
# Anastasios – Anastasios
# Apocauchos – Apokaphkhos
# Bakchos – Vakkhos
# Basileios – Vasilios
# Bessarionas - Vissarionas (shouldn't it be Vissarion, with -onas being the modern termination?)
# Caecilianos – Kekilianos
# Callinicos - Kallinikos
# Cecaumenos - Kekavmenos
# Christodoulos - Khristodoulos
# Constantinos - Konstantinos
# Cyrillos - Kirillos
# Demetrios - Dimitrios
# Dionysios - Dionisios
# Elias - Ilias
# Epiphanios - Epiphanios
# Eudaemon - Evdemon
# Eufasios - Ephasios
# Eumathios - Evmathios
# Eustathios - Ephstathios
# Euthymios - Ephthimios
# Gennadios - Yennadios
# Georgios - Yeoryios
# Gregorios - Gregorios
# Heraclios - Iraklios
# Hypatios - Ipatios
# Iohannis - Ioannis
# Iosef - Ioseph
# Kostas - Kostas
# Leon - Leon
# Leontios - Leontios
# Libanios - Livanios
# Loukas - Loukas
# Lydas - Lidas
# Lysas - Lisas
# Macarios - Makarios
# Manuel - Manuil
# Marcellinos - Markellinos
# Matthaios - Mattheos
# Mavrikios - Mavrikios
# Maximianos - Maximianos
# Michael - Mikhail
# Modestos - Modestos
# Narses - Narsis
# Nathanael - Nathanail
# Nikephoros - Nikiphoros
# Niketas - Nikitas
# Olympiodoros - Olimpiodoros
# Pachomios - Pakhomios
# Parasceviotes - Paraskeviotis
# Phocas - Phokas
# Sergios - Seryios
# Staurakios - Stavrakios
# Stephanos - Stephanos
# Strategios - Stratiyios
# Stylianos - Stilianos
# Symeon - Simeon
# Theophylactos - Theophilaktos
# Tiverios - Tiverios



ps. DeRougemont, you wanted to know about the difference between “tis” and “ek” in locative surnames – the meaning is practically the same, as Giorgos-Zahos said, but the difference is that “tis” is the (feminine) genitive of the definite article, therefore Vasilis tis Kritis would be literally “Vasilis of Crete” while “ek” is an old preposition meaning “out of” (it’s the same as the latin “ex” which should be familiar to you from its derivations in English) so that Vasilis ek Kritis would literally translate as “Vasilis from Crete”.

pps. Concerning the suggestion that Armenian/Slavic flavour be added to the list of names: Well, it IS already there. Some of the names mentioned here are probably of Armenian origin, that is, Hellenized versions of the names of Armenian nobility who became Byzantine subjects. I believe Narsis is one. Other names of Armenian origin that you might want to add to the list (if they're not there already, I didn't see) are Tzimiskis and Kourkouas; John Tzimisces (Ioannis Tzimiskis) was one of the powerful 10th century Emperors and John Curcuas (Ioannis Kourkouas) was a famous general of the same century.

[Giorgos]

Done and Done. Male, Female, Family and locatives for the Vyzantinous below

Male first names 176
Female first names 53
Family names 202
Locatives 51

Derougemont, let me know i you want me to shorten the numbers more, or if you are pleased.

[deRougemont]

UPDATE: In preparation for CNP v 3.00, the Byzantines now have an (awesome) new names list. See the first post in this thread to view the list.

Thanks Giorgos!

[Giorgos]

Sir.

[DrBeast]

I'll REALLY love it when a "Savvas ek Dramas" is created! I always wondered how I'd fare in a medieval setting!

Nice work Giorgo!

[BrandonM]

Hi, not sure if it was intentional - but in the Byzantine list you left out Konstantinos.

It was in the names.strings.bin file, but not in the descr_names.txt file.

BrandonM

[finneys13]

It is in the descr_names.txt?

[BrandonM]

Not in the one I downloaded, I just doublechecked the zip file.

[finneys13]

Hum, will study it, is it vanilla, SS or both?

[Theodora]

Concerning the suggestion that Armenian/Slavic flavour be added to the list of names: Well, it IS already there. Some of the names mentioned here are probably of Armenian origin, that is, Hellenized versions of the names of Armenian nobility who became Byzantine subjects. I believe Narsis is one. Other names of Armenian origin that you might want to add to the list (if they're not there already, I didn't see) are Tzimiskis and Kourkouas; John Tzimisces (Ioannis Tzimiskis) was one of the powerful 10th century Emperors and John Curcuas (Ioannis Kourkouas) was a famous general of the same century.

'Tzimisces' is a hellenized Armenian word -- "tshemshkik" -- a stab at the fact he was short even for his time! But I guess he was a total hottie because the women loved him. He was apparently a strawberry blond with blue eyes. Any true Byzantine lovers can't live without Lord Norwich's highly entertaining, who needs TV? trilogy called "Byzantium". I just wouldn't want to piss him off

[Dimitri The Hellene]

Can you put in as a last name,Georgiadis?


My last name

[Giorgos]

I wanted to put mine in as well, but i thought that it would be far from inconspicuous!

[iostephanos]

... Konstantinos Palaiologos ek Moreos, which means Konstantinos Palaiologos of Morea

hey... that means "Constantine Paleologus out of the Morea"; ek + genitive implies motion out of, so it would be used in a different context than this one. let's say we have a fleet stationed in constantinople and now it's on the move to intercept some arabs coming from crete; that fleet came "ek konstantinoupoleos".

for people, adjectives derived from the nation/place were used, just as in latin. someone from constantinople is a "konstantinoupolites".

here are a few:

alexandria, alexandreus, alexandrinos
antioch, antiocheus
smyrna, smyrnaios
nicaea, nikaeus
corinth, korinthios
rhodes, rhodios
chios, chios
naxos, naxios
athens, athenaios
jerusalem, hierosolymites
cyprus, kyprios, kypriotes
sicily, sikeliotes
syracuse, syrakousios
naples, neapolites
crete, kres, kretikos
cappodocia, kappadox, kappadokeios
macedonia, makedon, makedonites
georgia, iber
armenia, armenios
(from the rus), rhos



steph

p.s. if there's more than one, the first is more classical, the second more medieval
p.p.s. thanks for all the time & hard work that goes into this

[iostephanos]

... the meaning is practically the same, as Giorgos-Zahos said, but the difference is that “tis” is the (feminine) genitive of the definite article, therefore Vasilis tis Kritis would be literally “Vasilis of Crete”...

this implies that basil comes from outside of our "realm", or that he has some sort of dignity being alluded to. imagine that we live in constantinople and that there's some sort of upstart despotate of crete; this kind of construction would be used to introduce basil as (from that despotate) of crete. in modern greek i might say, "ime tis amerikis", but what's understood is something like "ime (politis) tis amerikis", i.e. i am (a citizen) of america as opposed to "ime amerikanos"/i am american. the other possibility is something like "vasilis tis kritis (episkopos)", basil (the bishop) of crete. in either case, "tis" doesn't speak to the place of origin; anyone can become an american citizen or bishop of crete.

you will see seals of the period inscribed "lord, please aid theodoros ho tou nikaias", meaning in this case "lord, please aid theodore (nephew of the metropolitan) of nicaea.

steph

[iostephanos]

here are a few more:

ho ex Abydinou, Abydinos
ho ex Athenon, Athenaios
ho ex Halikarnassou, Halikarnasseus
ho ex (H)adrianoupoleos, (H)adrianoupolites
ho ex Alexandroupoleos, Alexandroupolites
ho ex Alexandreias, Alexandreus
ho ex Amphipoleos, Amphipolites
ho ex Argous, Argeios
ho ex Ephesou, Ephesios
ho ex Epidaurou, Epidaurios
ho ex Euboias, Euboeus
ho ex Herakleiou, Herakleiotes (the H became silent by this time)
ho ek Delphon, Delphos
ho ek Kallipoleos, Kallipolites
ho ek Kerkyras, Kerkyreus, Kerkyraios
ho ek Khersonesou, Chersonesites
ho ek Khiou, Chios
ho ek Konstantinoupoleos, Konstantinoupolites
ho ek Korinthou, Korinthios
ho ek Laodikeias, Laodikeus
ho ek Larisas, Larisaios
ho ek Lesbou, Lesbios
ho ek Miletou, Milesios
ho ek Moreos, Moraites
ho ek Monembasias, Monembasios
ho ek Mytilenes, Mytilenaios
ho ek Naxou, Naxios
ho ek Nikaias, Nikaeus
ho ek Nikomedeias, Nikomedeus
ho ex Olympias, Olympios
ho ek Patron, Patreus
ho ek Philadelphias, Philadelpheus
ho ek Philippoupoleos, Philippoupolites
ho ek Samou, Samios
ho ek Serrhon, Serrhaios
ho ek Sinopes, Sinopeus
ho ek Spartes, Spartiates
ho ek Thebon, Thebaios
ho ek Thessalonikes, Thessalonikeus, Thessalonikaios, Salonikios
ho ek Trapezountos, Trapezountios

i realize that i transliterate differently but i thought the "classical" forms would be the best place to start when changing to whichever convention is preferred.

steph

[iostephanos]

ho Kalos, "the Good", "the Beautiful"
ho Prosaites, "the Beggar"
ho Methysos, "the Drunkard"
ho Sophos, "the Wise"
ho Siderourgos, "the Ironsmith"
ho Chalkeus, "the Coppersmith"
ho Pogonatos, "the Bearded"
ho Xylourgos, "the Carpenter"
ho Kalaphates, "the (ship's) Caulker"
ho Mourtzouphlos, "the Sullen"
ho Geros, "the Elder"
ho Neos, "the Younger"
ho Grammatikos, "the Learned"


one last thing, it's "ex" before vowels :-)

[iostephanos]

you could always throw in some "huios":

huios Andreou, "son of Andrew"
huios Ioannou, "son of John"
huios Alexiou, "son of Alexi"

and so on...

steph