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The familiarisation of the Greeks with Roman onomastics went through many phases and variations in space and time. Initially they used the Roman naming system correctly in official documents, but in many private documents Romans are named ‘� la grecque’, either solely by their praenomen or in combination with their father’s name, frequently a praenomen, both transcribed in Greek. Such interchange between conventions also occurs with novi cives, who are named either according to the Roman or the Greek formula or with a combination of the two denominations. The reductive form of naming Roman citizens decreased after Sulla and particularly during the Empire. In contrast, the use of fashionable Roman names by the Greeks, either as individual names or patronymics or both -in different combinations and variations- became common, reaching its peak in the second and particularly the third centuries AD.

A survey of the epigraphic material of Greece and Asia Minor shows that the adoption of Roman names by locals was a negligible feature of the onomastics of the Late Hellenistic poleis, whereas, from Caesar’s dictatorship onwards, the spread of Roman citizenship to provincials triggered an unprecedented diffusion of Roman names. This article aims at revealing the main differences in the way citizens of the poleis adopted Roman names and naming practices between these two periods. The question arises whether the onomastic situation of the Late Hellenistic period has to be interpreted as a sign of resistance towards Rome. With the Empire citizens of the poleis began to receive tria nomina upon the grant of Roman citizenship, and Roman names acquired a new socio-political value. It will be shown that this opened the door to wider Roman influence on local naming practices, so that by the beginning of the 2nd c. AD the onomastic landscape of many poleis had been profoundly transformed.

The most significant change that occurred with the growth and expansion of Roman power in the Greek world was the piecemeal introduction of Roman names towards the end of the Hellenistic age, and, in due course, with the bestowal of Roman citizenship, the very different onomastic formulae of which led to varieties in terminology, as the Greek-speaking population was increasingly affected by the system of nomenclature employed by the Romans, and bestowed in due course on them. This chapter focuses on the changes that occurred in the traditional Greek system of ethnic forms and usage. The discussion covers multiple civic ethnics and the establishment of Christian communities in and after the fourth century.

For the two centuries following the Galatian occupation of central Anatolia after 278 BC, only a few nearly exclusively Celtic names of tribal or mercenary leaders have been transmitted. In the first century BC, the first examples of Anatolian names re-emerge in our evidence, and a few Greco-Macedonian ones alongside them. By the beginning of the second century AD, Roman names prevailed among Galatian aristocrats. This study also looks at the Phrygian and Celtic traditions that were sometimes hidden behind Greek or Roman façades: the extent of such complex naming practices reveals the compatibility of embracing Hellenism or Romanness with an awareness of the Galatian or Phrygian cultural heritage still in the second century. Such local peculiarities faded away in the third century with the universal extension of the Roman franchise and the spread of Christian names.