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 phonology and this cluster underwent metathesis early in the Ancient Greek period. Metathesis is likely in this case; clusters of a voiced stop and , like , do not occur in Ancient Greek, since they change to by assimilation (see below), while clusters with the opposite order, like , pronounced , do occur. Ancient grammarians, such as Aristotle in his "Poetics" and Dionysius Thrax in his Art of Grammar, categorized letters () according to what speech sounds ( 'elements') they represented. They called the letters for vowels ('pronounceable', singular ); the letters for the nasals, liquids, and , and the letters