Endings of Persian names

In his work the Histories, Herodotus claims that all Persian names in his day ended in the letter "s". Some examples include Cyrus, Cambyses, Xerxes, Mardonius etc etc.

Was he correct?

Originally posted by Zagros No.  But a lot of them did and the sound was not the same as the S sound.  It was 'SH', since this sound did not exist in Greek (and still doesn't) they substituted it with S. This is why Kourosh becomes Kuros (Cyrus), Dariyush - Dariyus etc.

I believe it was Dar�yavosh (spelled Darayavahaush, Greek Dare�os). There is a comedy by Aristophanes in which a Persian messenger actually tries to  speak Greek and substitutes almost every vowel with an -a-. Unfortunately, I can't remember the name of the play.


Edited by Lepidodendron - 03-Feb-2007 at 09:52

O, that is really strange. I thought the name was spelled Darayavaush, which was pronounced Dareyavosh, along with Oramazda for Auramazda. Somewhere in a very grey past I tried to learn a bit of Ancient Persian, and those names served as pronunciation examples in my grammar. It may be that my memory is failing me. 

Just to make sure: I believe the phrase "I am Xerxes, king of kings", would run something like "Adam ahmi Xsheyarsha, xshayathiya xshayathiyanam."

By the way, it suddenly occurs to me that the last two words in reversed order would possibly render the modern form "shahanshah", "king of kings", in which -an- is a remnant of the plural genitive. Interesting. 

Edited by Lepidodendron - 03-Feb-2007 at 20:23

Originally posted by Lepidodendron By the way, it suddenly occurs to me that the last two words in reversed order would possibly render the modern form "shahanshah", "king of kings", in which -an- is a remnant of the plural genitive. Interesting.

"Xsh" has been replaced with "Sh" [Xshapa -> Shab (Night)] and "th" -> "h" [Mithra -> Mihr], so "Xshyathiya" was changed to just "Shah".

Shahanshah means king of kings.

Shah-han - kings
Shah - King

As far as i know ; Shahan is another word in persian language =)