What's in a Name? Yarih at Ugarit

This paper analyzes the cases wherein a previously unknown and unique mythological character (with his/her specific behavior, “personal” traits, appearance, origin, etc.) is generated by a cultural linguistic sign or a fragment of text. This research is based on the Russian cultural and linguistic tradition, mainly in its dialectal version (the language of Russian peasants). Its sources include data published in the late 19th–early 21st century in dictionaries of Russian dialects and, primarily, the unpublished field materials of the Ural Federal University Toponymic Expedition, covering data from the Russian North, the Urals, and the Volga region. According to their nature or origin, the names of characters studied in this paper derive from two types of linguistic signs: (1) Names based on usual forms of standard vocabulary that can be both proper and common nouns; the former may refer to various categories, such as toponyms (names of geographical objects), chrononyms (names of calendar dates), hagionyms (names of saints), names of icons, etc. (2) Names originating from a text, usually folkloric; these are word combinations or phrases that only act as a single unit within their “parent” text. Sometimes, but less often, these consist of one word that is of key importance in the source text. Such a phrase or word can migrate outside the “parent” text or genre, expanding their lexical combinability and changing their syntactic regime to become a name of a mythological character. It takes two sources of motivation for a new character to emerge—a linguistic (a word that seeks a new context) and a cultural one (a semiotically intense context, such as a situation associated with danger, prohibition, omens, aggression, or magical practices). The combination of these incentives is not uncommon, so the stock of mythology used for names is being constantly renewed.

A discussion of names in the Amarna correspondance, along with suggestions of alternative readings, and a possible generic divine name used in antiquity.

Idolatry is one of Israel's most heinous sins, according to the biblical authors. The Tablets of the Law that Moses brings down from Mt. Sinai begin with the line: "I, YHWH (Yahweh), am your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods besides me." Despite this, the prophets rail against Israel's tendency to chase after other deities: "For your gods have become as many as your towns, O Judah, and you have set up as many altars to Shame [a derogatory reference to Baal] as there are streets in Jerusalem-altars for sacrifice to Baal" (Jeremiah 2:28, 11:13). Many scholars agree that ancient Israel was a polytheistic society. The dominant view today is that the Israelite populace as a whole was not monotheistic (believing in the existence of only one god) or even monolatrous (worshiping one god while not necessarily denying the existence of others) until the period of the Babylonian Exile, in the sixth century B.C.E. One tool commonly used to measure Israel's polytheism is onomastics-the study of names. Both biblical and extrabiblical Israelite names are known to incorporate the names of gods-often YHWH (Yahweh), the name of the Israelite deity, but also the names of foreign gods. These names are called theophoric names, from the Greek for "bearing a god." Examples include Saul's son Eshbaal and grandson Merib-baal (1 Chronicles 8:33-34, 9:39-40), whose names incorporate the term baal. Similarly, the judge Gideon is sometimes referred to as Jerubbaal (Judges 6:32, 7:1, 8:29). Among the Canaanites, Baal, which literally means "lord," was the title of the storm god Haddu/Hadad, but it was used so frequently that it functioned essentially as his name, as it is often used in the Bible. Its basic generic sense is still reflected in the fact that in the Bible (when it isn't part of a personal name), it is always preceded by a definite article-"the Baal," as in Judges 6:25-32. Names containing this term, scholars suggest, are evidence of Baal worship among early Israelites. But the evidence of onomastics, as we shall see, is not quite so clear. First, there are problems in assuming that every use of a theophoric name necessarily connotes worship of a particular god. Second, and even more significant, the appearance of non-Yahwistic theophoric names in the Bible is remarkably rare. The names that Israelites gave their children do not support