Religious Conceptions Underlying Sumerian Proper Names

In cataloguing the Proper Names in the Haverford Library Collection I was impressed with the amount of Sumerian theology which they expressed. Almost all the religious ideas which underly Semitic proper names can be paralleled in Sumerian. The following study is based on the names in the Haverford Collection. These tablets, though but four hundred in number, contain so many pay rolls that they are particularly rich in proper names. Nearly 3300 individuals are mentioned in them, while in all the documents from which Huber collected the names for his Personennamen . . . der Zeit der Kinige von Ur und Nisin there are only about 5100 names. The documents here drawn upon do not, therefore, afford a meager basis for induction. Of course a great many of the names found in the Haverford tablets occur in other documents also, and are found in Huber's list. Before considering the religious ideas of particular names it should be noted that some of the most peculiar and striking of these ideas have not yet been found in names of earlier periods. One searches the name-lists from the reigns of Urkagina and Lugalanda in vain for some of them; though, of course, this is not true of those which express the simpler and more common ideas. The first fact that impresses one in the study of these names is the popularity of certain deities. For example, the name of the goddess Bau enters as a component part into the names of at least 147 individuals mentioned in these texts; that of Utu, the sun-god, into the names of 64 persons; that of Kal, into 58; that of Galgir into 50; and that of Ningirsu, into 54. This does not show any tendency to monotheism among the Sumerians any more than the popularity of Marduk