Elaine Matthews | |
---|---|
Born | Netherton | 19 August 1942
Died | 26 June 2011 68) Oxford | (aged
Academic background | |
Education | St Hilda's College, Oxford |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Classics |
Sub-discipline | Greek onomastics |
Institutions | University of Oxford |
Elaine Matthews BA BPhil (19 August 1942 - 26 June 2011) [1] was a British classical scholar at the University of Oxford and one of the principal contributors to the Lexicon of Greek Personal Names.
Matthews was an alumna of St Hilda's College,Oxford,where she took a BA in Literae Humaniores (1960–64) and was a pupil of Barbara Levick. She went on to take the MPhil (then BPhil) in Ancient History,working on Lucian. [2] After a break to raise her two daughters,Matthews embarked on a research career in Greek onomastics at the University of Oxford. In 2010,after she had retired,she was the dedicatee of a Festschrift on Ancient Greek personal names in honour of her distinguished career,containing a collection of scholarly essays on Greek onomastics but with an appreciation of Matthews as a scholar by Alan Bowman as its first chapter. [3]
She was a supernumerary fellow of St Hilda's College,Oxford,from 1996 and was honorary secretary for the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies,of which she was also a trustee, [4] for twenty-one years. [5]
Matthews was born in Netherton,Yorkshire,but grew up in Birmingham. Her father was a police officer. She died of cancer,aged 68,in 2011. [6]
Onomastics is the study of the etymology,history,and use of proper names. An orthonym is the proper name of the object in question,the object of onomastic study.
A name is a term used for identification by an external observer. They can identify a class or category of things,or a single thing,either uniquely,or within a given context. The entity identified by a name is called its referent. A personal name identifies,not necessarily uniquely,a specific individual human. The name of a specific entity is sometimes called a proper name and is,when consisting of only one word,a proper noun. Other nouns are sometimes called "common names" or (obsolete) "general names". A name can be given to a person,place,or thing;for example,parents can give their child a name or a scientist can give an element a name.
Dorothy Margaret Doig Edgington FBA is a philosopher active in metaphysics and philosophical logic. She is particularly known for her work on the logic of conditionals and vagueness.
Prosopography is an investigation of the common characteristics of a group of people,whose individual biographies may be largely untraceable. Research subjects are analysed by means of a collective study of their lives,in multiple career-line analysis. The discipline is considered to be one of the auxiliary sciences of history.
Bachelor of Philosophy is the title of an academic degree that usually involves considerable research,either through a thesis or supervised research projects. Unlike many other bachelor's degrees,the BPhil is typically a postgraduate degree awarded to individuals who have already completed a traditional undergraduate degree.
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The Vindolanda tablets were,at the time of their discovery,the oldest surviving handwritten documents in Britain. They are a rich source of information about life on the northern frontier of Roman Britain. Written on fragments of thin,post-card sized wooden leaf-tablets with carbon-based ink,the tablets date to the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. Although similar records on papyrus were known from elsewhere in the Roman Empire,wooden tablets with ink text had not been recovered until 1973,when archaeologist Robin Birley,his attention being drawn by student excavator Keith Liddell,discovered some at the site of Vindolanda,a Roman fort in northern England.
Timothy J. Cornell is a British historian specializing in ancient Rome. He is an Emeritus Professor of Ancient History at the University of Manchester,having retired from his teaching position in 2011.
Elaine Fantham was a British-Canadian classicist whose expertise lay particularly in Latin literature,especially comedy,epic poetry and rhetoric,and in the social history of Roman women. Much of her work was concerned with the intersection of literature and Greek and Roman history. She spoke fluent Italian,German and French and presented lectures and conference papers around the world—including in Germany,Italy,the Netherlands,Norway,Argentina,and Australia.
In the modern world,Greeks names are the personal names among people of Greek language and culture generally consist of a given name and a family name.
Simon Hornblower,FBA is an English classicist and academic. He is Professor of Classics and Ancient History in the University of Oxford and Senior Research Fellow of All Souls College,Oxford.
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Andrew Ian Wilson is a British classical archaeologist and Head of School of Archaeology at the University of Oxford. He was director of the Oxford Institute of Archaeology from 2009 to 2011. Wilson's main research interests are the economy of the Roman world,Greek and Roman water supply,and ancient technology.
The Faculty of Classics,previously the Faculty of Literae Humaniores,is a subdivision of the University of Oxford concerned with the teaching and research of classics. The teaching of classics at Oxford has been going on for 900 years,and was at the centre of nearly all its undergraduates' education well into the twentieth century.
The study of ancient Greek personal names is a branch of onomastics,the study of names,and more specifically of anthroponomastics,the study of names of persons. There are hundreds of thousands and even millions of Greek names on record,making them an important resource for any general study of naming,as well as for the study of ancient Greece itself. The names are found in literary texts,on coins and stamped amphora handles,on potsherds used in ostracisms,and,much more abundantly,in inscriptions and on papyri. This article will concentrate on Greek naming from the 8th century BC,when the evidence begins,to the end of the 6th century AD.
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