Minoan Names
Another entry on the work Richard Vallance has been doing on the decipherment of Linear A. One of the most fascinating aspects of the research has been the various eponyms, or personal names, that have turned up. With these names come questions:
- Are the names male or female? With some, I think we can say that they're definitely male. Dumirewe the shepherd, for example. With many others, however, it's unclear, because we don't know how the Minoan names differentiated between men and women. Is "Turunuseme" a man or a woman? What about "Adunitana?"
- How do we normalize these names? Linear B is an early form of Greek, so it's much easier to normalize, or get the spoken/regular form of the name, because Greek is still a living language. E-ke-ro, for example, becomes "Hector." A-pi-er-a becomes "Amphiera," a woman's name. What do we do about the names we find on Linear A tablets. Was "Siramaritai" (which I suspect is a woman's name) pronounced just so, or might it have been pronounced "Sirmarta," or "Siramarti?" (Personally, I think "Siramaritai" is pretty just as it is."
Hopefully one of my readers who has more insight into Linear A and B can speak further as to this question.