History Online - Chronology

It is important that people in antiquity did not have names in the contemporary sense of the word but only had nicknames meaningful in the original tongue. The father of a Roman consul in 169 B.C. had 13 names, and his son 38. The nicknames characterized a man; the more remarkable traits of character, the more nicknames. Different chroniclers gave an emperor the different nicknames under which he was known. Moreover, they sometimes knew the same emperor under different nicknames. Pharaohs bore one name before the coronation, and another after it. Since they were crowned several times in different regions, the number of "names" grew sharply. For example, these nicknames were strong, light, and so forth.

"The csar Ivan III had the name Timothy; Vassily III was Gabriel ...; the csarevitch Dmitry murdered in Uglich was Uar. One name was regal, and the other Christian" ([98]).

Traditional history believes that medieval names were different from ancient ones. However, textual analysis demonstrates that ancient names were quite often used in the Middle Ages. Nilus Ancyranus (who died in A.D. 450) wrote letters to the contemporary monks Apollodorus, Amphictyon, Atticus, Anaxagoras, Demophanes, Asclepiades, Aristocles, Aristarchus, Alcibiades, Antiochus, Apollos, and others [99]. An exceptionally large number of ancient names were used in the 12th- to 14th-century Byzantine Empire.

Handwritten books have long survived the beginning of printing, successfully competing with the latter throughout Europe ([94]). With a few exceptions, almost all Irish literature of the 7th-8th century "only exists in manuscript form" ([94]). Until 1500, 77 percent of all printed books were in Latin, since the Latin type was easier to make. However, the types of other languages were being introduced into the printing practice extremely slowly, because the technology of making special marks to denote accents, vowels, and so forth, was complicated. Therefore, for many years after printed books had appeared, "people copying Greek, Arabic and Jewish manuscripts did not remain unemployed...." ([94]). Especially many hand-written books of the book-printing era were made in Greece (!). It is possible that many of these manuscripts were later declared "ancient". All of the above facts make many of the paleographic instances of dating doubtful. It turns out that many manuscripts were copied from books already printed ([94]). Greek monasteries were especially famous for their scribes who copied printed books! To detect such manuscripts, one should compare the textual errors with those in printed editions. Most probably, in copying a book, the errors were copied, too.