Name Change as an Indication of Religious Conversion in Antiquity

Abstract

We take as our starting point the situation at Caesarea in Palestine in A.D. 308: the Persecution is perhaps at its most severe, headed up locally by the praeses, Firmillian. On trial before him are several Christians of Egyptian origin, but he is nonplussed because they have renounced their birth-name: 'instead of the names associated with idols which their parents had given them, they called themselves after prophets'.' The names the men took to identify with their new faith were Elijah, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Samuel, and Daniel; Eusebius does not even record their original names for us. This incident typifies the subject of the present paper: how may we draw upon the evidence of names and name-change to deduce useful historical conclusions about changes in religious adherence in antiquity? Yet our subject needs to be seen in perspective. For there are many other reasons, and blendings of reasons, why people alter their name. In a papyrus letter2 found in the Egyptian Fayum, written by a new recruit from the Roman naval base at Misenum in Italy, Apion writes to his father with news of what has been happening, and adds towards the end, 'My name is Antonius Maximus'. The Roman name he was given upon enlistment indicates that he was in receipt of Latin rights, something short of full citizen status. When a Roman adopted a male into his family, as Julius Caesar did with Octavian, the name change involved had nothing to do with religion either. This is also true of the manumission of a Roman slave, who took his owner's name as part of his new