College of Archaeology

Within the scientific activities of the Department of Ancient Iraqi Languages, a seminar was held on Monday, 27/12/2021, during which a doctoral student delivered without courses, Khaled Ali Khattab, and his supervisor professor, Prof. Dr. Salem Yahya Khalaf, the title of their research extracted and tagged “The significance of ancient Babylonian personal names transmitted from animals.” In it they dealt with a statement of the ancient Babylonian personal names (of the ancient Babylonian era) derived from the names of animals, touching on their ancient origins and extensions among the Arab tribes, which called many of their members by animal names, due to the Arab’s connection with nature and it’s attachment to it.And if the Arabs were to described one of the people, they would say: He is onomatopoeic his people and their names, so why did they name their sons after the names of animals, both wild and pet? It was said: The purpose of naming after the wild animals is to strike terror into the hearts of the enemies.And it came in the book “Fiqh al-Lughah”: “Arabs call their sons the ugliest of names,” he said: “It is one of the ways of the Arabs when they name their sons Hajar, Kulaib, tiger, wolf, lion, and the like.” Some of them, if they had a child , they would call him by what he sees and he is optimistic about, and if he sees a stone or hears it, he interprets it’s intensity, toughness, patience and strength, and if he sees a dog, he interprets it’s guarding and familiarity and it’s sound dimensions, and if he sees a tiger, he interprets it’s protection, wandering and stammering, and if he sees a wolf, it interprets it’s majestic ability, and decency, and some of the populists said to Ibn al-Kalbi: Why did the Arabs name their sons a khalb, aus, Asad, and son on, and name their slaves yusser, sa’ad and Yemen? And he said : Because she named her children after her enemies, and she named her servants after herself. And through our study of the ancient Babylonian personal names, we found the same thing, and the reason is due to the origin of the peoples who settled in Mesopotamia, whose homeland was the Arabian Peninsula.In this research, we touched on the significance of personal names transmitted from animals, whether domestic or not, and from aquatic animals, birds, rodents, insects and reptiles. And the significance of these names came from that environment, and each name has a special significance.That is why the Babylonian child was called.