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Phokas surname [13 March 2013]
I am curious why Phokas/Phokaina has been changed from a surname to a given name. Is it not clearly a family name? I am not an expert on things Byzantine (although I did live in Istanbul for a few years), but I think family names were establishing themselves among the Byzantine aristocracy in the tenth century. Some, like the Doukas, go back a little earlier. This source gives the surname "Phokas" as an established, hereditary surname from at least the 10th century.--Werebear 23:19, 12 March 2013 (EDT)
- Maybe. I'm not sure where one draws the line and says that a name has been established as a surname in the modern sense. This seems to me more accurately understood as a noble house name, particularly in the context of the people in question, which is why I've added them to a common Noble House category. But if you disagree, I won't object to it going back in for people in the House of Phokas. --jrm03063 00:25, 13 March 2013 (EDT)
- As I say, I am not an expert, but the sources I have seen regard it as a surname. Vlada Stankovic, in his article on Nikephoras Phokas the elder in the Encyclopedia of the Hellenic World, explicitly says that the original Phokas "gave this name to his son and his successors as a surname." Since I plan on citing that source in the Phokas line, I feel it would be more accurate to put "Phokas" in the surname field, at least for the name I am using that source to cite. In my opinion, "Phokas" is far more of a surname, even in "the modern sense", than it is a "given name". I am not quite sure what "in the modern sense" means, but I wonder what you would make of the surnames of the students I taught in Istanbul in the 1980s, most of which were invented by their grandfathers or great-grandfathers in the 1930s. They are definitely legal surnames, and function as surnames, but surnames "in the modern sense"...--Werebear 10:24, 13 March 2013 (EDT)
- I guess what I am getting at is this: is not a quasi-surname still more of a surname than it is a given name? If I was going to put it anywhere else, it would be as a suffix (not that I would do that).--Werebear 10:39, 13 March 2013 (EDT)
- I'm going to agree with you. In the process of working through and (pun intended) focusing on this group of related people, it does seem more clear that this really is a surname - or at least - surname enough. --jrm03063 11:33, 13 March 2013 (EDT)
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