The Greek Diminutive Suffix -laxo- -toyjj-. 199 



(fxog (CB. 708), which can net come from EiprjvaTo^, which would 

 have given *''Ipavat'7xo? (cf. § 12 third note), but must be " Kose- 



3. Apparent cases of other meanings of -IGY.0-. 



106. Other apparent meanings of -ktxo- than that of expressing 

 similarity and the ' diminutive ' meanings are still rarer in proper 

 names than in appellatives (§ 85 ff.), and may with great prob- 

 ability be denied altogether. It would indeed be possible to 

 assume that AaijiTxo? and Aaiji-TXY] were conceived as ' he (or she) 

 who has a (large) gullet (>.a[j.oc)/ instead of being derived from 

 Aaij.10? Acciiiccc, and Adcpa, or that liohirmoc was ' he who has (big) 

 feet ' instead of a diminutive of IIoBfj?, were it not for the fact 

 that there are no proper names where the assumption of the 

 possessive meaning of our suffix is a necessary one. In the same 

 way we might assume that the meaning of appurtenance was 

 present in KoXko^icixoc, the name of a steward, as ' he who has 

 to do with the coin {y.6Wu^o^),' instead of being a diminutive of 

 the proper name KoXko^uq, and that the Boeotian 'IpavCcntoc meant 

 ' belonging to peace (sip-^vrj) ' rather than that it was a " Kosename " 

 of 'IpavixTCO?, were it not that the overwhelming preponderance of 

 diminutives should make us classify the ambiguous examples as 

 probably belonging there. There are indeed a few words where 

 appurtenance seems at first sight the necessary meaning of the 

 suffix : "AyQiayici (Lycophr. 1152) : aypoc,^ ' she who belongs to the 

 fields,' an epithet of the goddess Athena ; MsAiayiog (Anth. P. 6. 

 82) : [illoc, ' he who is concerned with the melody,' the name of 

 a fluteblower ; Taniayiog (Nil. Ep. 3. 75) ' he who belongs either 

 to the town TocTrat, or Taizri ' ; ^EQyidxog (Harp. s. v. 'EpytTXT]) : toc 

 spya, perhaps ' he who is concerned with the fields.' For the last- 

 mentioned, however, it is clear that the person designated is a 

 mere hero eponymous, and that his name is therefore a retrograde 

 derivative of the name of the town 'Epyi^TXY], which he was re- 

 puted to have founded. As to the other three, their isolated po- 

 sition would incline me to the view that they come from names 

 which are accidentally not quotable, ^ e. g. *'Aypia or ^TdcTcto?. On 

 the other hand it is conceivable that the suffix secondarily de- 



^ If 'AyQiaxcc were an old word it might have come from the adjective 

 ayQiog. Cf. § 10. 



^ Perhaps MsUaxog was derived from MsXwv or Mskog ( : //eAw 'to be a 

 care to ') , and was secondarily connected with fxekog. 



