Greek and Latin Names in Russian Dress

Extract

The treatment of Greek and Latin names in modern languages differs with the language; it may be worth while to seek reasons for the difference, it may bring out something of the history of classical learning in each nation.

In Italian and French the names, being really part of the language, have behaved much like other words and fall like them into the two classes, those which have changed their form in the mouths of the people in obedience to unconscious phonetic processes, and those which have been given convenient shape by the conscious action of the learned. Actually the distinction coincides almost exactly with the distinction between names made familiar by their Christian associations, and names occurring in profane history and literature. The literary names merely suffer simple changes, especially of termination, to bring them into line with the modern language. The Greek names are first Latinised and then if necessary assimilated. But if a historical person anticipates the name, e.g., of a saint, he may be treated familiarly. It is rather a shock to recognise in a Denys the tyrant of Syracuse, on the analogy perhaps of the Areopagite; St. Denis the first bishop of Paris has even lost, his y, but we keep it at St. Denys near Southampton.