Introduction. What Does a Divine Name Do?
Résumé
Tis but thy name that is my enemy; Thou art thyself, though not a Montague. What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot, Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part Belonging to a man. O, be some other name! The database (https://base-map-polytheisms.huma-num.fr/) records divine onomastic sequences ("attestation" in French, "testimony" in English) found in sources (inscriptions on various material supports). The sequences or testimonies are broken down into onomastic elements, the smallest unit of meaning; we have therefore refrained from distinguishing between theonym, epithet and epiclesis to make the data recording as fluid as possible. Cf. Lebreton/Bonnet 2019. Lévi-Strauss 1962, 47. Usener 1896; Scheid/Svenbro 2005.
The database focuses on Greek-language and West Semitic sources throughout the wider Mediterranean world, from 100 BCE to 400 CE. Onomastic strategies are also an excellent line of attack for observing the similarities and differences between these logics for organising the divine. The MAP database contains a number of testimonies for a single element where this is an adjective or a noun acting as a theonym, such as Hupsistos by itself or ʼdn by itself.
Cf. Scheid/Svenbro 2005. See August., De civ. D. 6.9.1: "those very offices of the gods, so meanly and so minutely portioned out, so that they say that they ought to be supplicated, each one according to his special function."
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