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 Greek in the Hellenistic period. Recent epigraphic discoveries in the Greek region of Macedonia, such as the Pella curse tablet, suggest that ancient Macedonian might have been a variety of North Western Ancient Greek. Ancient Greek differs from Proto-Indo-European and other Indo-European languages in certain ways. In phonotactics, Ancient Greek words could end only in a vowel or ; final stops were lost, as in "milk", compared with "of milk" (genitive). Ancient Greek of the classical period also differed in phonemic inventory: The pronunciation of Ancient Greek was very different from that of Modern Greek. Ancient Greek had long and