Ancient Greek personal names Benseler (1863–1870) was for long the central work of reference but has now been replaced. Bechtel (1917) is still the main work that seeks to explain the formation and meaning of Greek names, although the studies of O. Masson et al. collected in "Onomastica Graeca Selecta" (1990–2000) have constantly to be consulted. L. Robert, "Noms indigènes dans l’Asie Mineure gréco-romaine" (1963), is, despite its title, largely a successful attempt to show that many names attested in Asia Minor and supposed to be indigenous are in fact Greek; it is a dazzling demonstration of the resources of Greek naming. The fundamental
Ancient Greek verbs three tenses are used, and they distinguish aspect only, not time: The optative mood likewise uses these three tenses, but there is also a future optative, used mainly to report indirectly what would be a future indicative in direct speech. Ancient Greek has no perfect progressive or past perfect progressive. Thus, the meaning "he has been doing" is typically expressed with the present tense, and "he had been doing (earlier)" is expressed with the imperfect tense: For further information on the endings, see Ancient Greek grammar (tables). Dictionaries of Ancient Greek usually give six principal parts for any verb. For