# Genuine Sumerian names carry these elements three to four times as often as the archaic names > Scored by the same procedure, lemmatized Early Dynastic Sumerian names contain one of Englund's elements in 40% (ED I–II, 326 names), 47% (ED IIIa… Source: https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/proto-cuneiform/evidence/EVD0DFVQADHXGK8/genuine-sumerian-names-carry-these-elements-three-to-four Publisher: Mysteries Department Licence: CC BY 4.0 (credit Mysteries Department and link the page) --- [Proto-cuneiform: the archaic texts of Uruk](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/proto-cuneiform)Evidence Evidence · Proto-cuneiform: the archaic texts of Uruk # Genuine Sumerian names carry these elements three to four times as often as the archaic names Scored by the same procedure, lemmatized Early Dynastic Sumerian names contain one of Englund's elements in 40% (ED I–II, 326 names), 47% (ED IIIa, 11,799) and 53% (ED IIIb, 31,083) of cases, 2.9 to 4.5 times their nulls, with odds ratios of 4.5 to 5.8; the archaic names reach 12.4%, 1.27 times their null, with an odds ratio of 1.35. Supported0 ## What it means Key question[What language, if any, do the proto-cuneiform texts record?](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/proto-cuneiform/questions/QST0DEDT73JJJ1B/what-language-if-any-do-the-proto-cuneiform-texts-record) 5 answers, none ahead yet **Open** unchanged Part of it[Do the roughly 440 personal names in the archaic texts follow Sumerian, Semitic or some other naming pattern?](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/proto-cuneiform/questions/QST0DEDTDFDF2VV/do-the-roughly-440-personal-names-in-the-archaic-texts) 5 answers, none ahead yet **Open** unchanged Answer this evidence bears on[The names favour Sumerian name elements](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/proto-cuneiform/answers/ANS0DFQRT0P7MAJ/the-names-favour-sumerian-name-elements) Counts against1 for, 3 against **Still possible** unchanged What it implies 1. The archaic names do not have a Sumerian onomastic profile; the answer that they favour Sumerian elements is ruled out on its own criterion.For: Do the roughly 440 personal names in the archaic texts follow Sumerian, Semitic or some other naming pattern? 1. Englund's names argument, restated as a comparison with real Sumerian names rather than as a deficit, holds: the Uruk III names are measurably not Sumerian-pattern names.For the key question: What language, if any, do the proto-cuneiform texts record? ## Next steps 12 1 Screen continuity matches against archaic lexical spellings Adds evidenceGood odds~2 h [On: Do the roughly 440 personal names in the archaic texts follow Sumerian, Semitic or some other naming pattern?](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/proto-cuneiform/questions/QST0DEDTDFDF2VV/do-the-roughly-440-personal-names-in-the-archaic-texts) **20** score Details Go through the 27 matched archaic-to-ED names. Drop any that depend on a spelling first attested after ED I-II, such as the EN.E2 spelling of Enlil, and rerun the null comparison. If the excess over the null holds, continuity stands. 2 Archive-level name profiles Adds evidenceGood odds~3 h [On: Do the roughly 440 personal names in the archaic texts follow Sumerian, Semitic or some other naming pattern?](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/proto-cuneiform/questions/QST0DEDTDFDF2VV/do-the-roughly-440-personal-names-in-the-archaic-texts) **19** score Details Compare the full sign profiles of Schøyen/Brussels names and excavated Jemdet Nasr/Uruk names (shared vocabulary, Jensen-Shannon distance against a permutation null) to see whether they form two distinct naming populations. 3 Per-match chance calibration Adds evidenceGood odds~3 h [On: Do the roughly 440 personal names in the archaic texts follow Sumerian, Semitic or some other naming pattern?](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/proto-cuneiform/questions/QST0DEDTDFDF2VV/do-the-roughly-440-personal-names-in-the-archaic-texts) **19** score Details For each matched name, estimate the probability of a chance match from the frequency of its signs in ordinary entries and in Early Dynastic names, and rank the matches by strength. 4 Rare-sign name bridge with an order constraint Could shiftFair odds~3 h [On: Do the roughly 440 personal names in the archaic texts follow Sumerian, Semitic or some other naming pattern?](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/proto-cuneiform/questions/QST0DEDTDFDF2VV/do-the-roughly-440-personal-names-in-the-archaic-texts) **19** score Details Repeat the bridge only for archaic names that contain a sign occurring in under 1% of names, weighting each match by how unlikely it is under the shuffle null. A surplus there would point to real survivals; none would leave the names with no route to a reading. Ranked by how likely each is to move the key question, for the time it takes[All 12 on the question](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/proto-cuneiform/questions/QST0DEDTDFDF2VV/do-the-roughly-440-personal-names-in-the-archaic-texts#next) ## How it was found 1 run [Sumerian benchmark: the same element test on Early Dynastic names (Oracc ePSD2)](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/proto-cuneiform/runs/RUN0DFVQR5WN96F/sumerian-benchmark-the-same-element-test-on-early-dynastic) Method [Name-element enrichment against a corpus baseline](https://mysteriesdept.com/methods/MTH0DFQRJYNCY4T/name-element-enrichment-against-a-corpus-baseline) · [Session 3](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/proto-cuneiform/sessions/SES0DFVRK8PYQFX/session-3-the-archaic-names-benchmarked-against-real) **Result.** The Sumerian name corpora are enriched three- to four-and-a-half-fold in every period, and the archaic names are not. This meets the kill criterion of H-NAMES-SUMERIAN: the archaic names do not have a Sumerian onomastic profile.. Share of names containing at least one of Englund's elements against a length-matched null; token odds ratio with a text-cluster bootstrap**{'ED_I-II': {'names': 326, 'or_95': [4.66, 7.12], 'observed': 0.402, 'odds_ratio': 5.84, 'null_median': 0.089}, 'ED_IIIa': {'names': 11799, 'or_95': [4.71, 5.01], 'observed': 0.465, 'odds_ratio': 4.86, 'null_median': 0.14}, 'ED_IIIb': {'names': 31083, 'or_95': [4.39, 4.55], 'observed': 0.528, 'odds_ratio': 4.47, 'null_median': 0.184}, 'Uruk_III_archaic': {'names': 540, 'or_95': [1.09, 1.6], 'observed': 0.124, 'odds_ratio': 1.35, 'null_median': 0.098}}** The Sumerian name corpora are enriched three- to four-and-a-half-fold in every period, and the archaic names are not. This meets the kill criterion of H-NAMES-SUMERIAN: the archaic names do not have a Sumerian onomastic profile. Figure 1 Real Sumerian names carry the stock name elements four to six times more than chance; the Uruk III names barely do Token odds ratio of Englund's Sumerian name elements in names against each corpus's other words, with 95% bootstrap intervals; Oracc ePSD2 and CDLI odds ratio95% low95% high An odds ratio of 1 means names use the elements no more than ordinary words. The jump falls between Uruk III and Archaic Ur, where the first phonetic name spellings appear. Drawn by the site with [Sumerian benchmark](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/proto-cuneiform/runs/RUN0DFVQR5WN96F/sumerian-benchmark-the-same-element-test-on-early-dynastic) [Early Dynastic Sumerian personal names, lemmatized (Oracc ePSD2 admin corpora ED I–II, IIIa, IIIb)](https://mysteriesdept.com/datasets/DAT0DFVPZDQBX11/early-dynastic-sumerian-personal-names-lemmatized-oracc)[Archaic personal names in proto-cuneiform (editor-marked, CDLI)](https://mysteriesdept.com/datasets/DAT0DFQRBEXWTK9/archaic-personal-names-in-proto-cuneiform-editor-marked-cdli)[ed_benchmark.py][1 output](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/proto-cuneiform/runs/RUN0DFVQR5WN96F/sumerian-benchmark-the-same-element-test-on-early-dynastic#outputs) Notes from the run Readings are mapped to sign names through the OGSL index, so the Early Dynastic and archaic tests use the same signs. Early Dynastic names are spelled with more signs (2.2–3.1 against 1.9), which the length-matched null absorbs. ## Sources 3 [Gender, age, and labour organization in the earliest texts from Mesopotamia and Iran (c. 3300–2900 BC)](https://mysteriesdept.com/sources/SRC0DFQR2G4EYKD/gender-age-and-labour-organization-in-the-earliest-texts) Kelley 2018 SRC [Kingship in the Early Mesopotamian Onomasticon 2800–2200 BCE](https://mysteriesdept.com/sources/SRC0DFQR3XM5SHF/kingship-in-the-early-mesopotamian-onomasticon-28002200-bce) Andersson 2012 SRC [The Smell of the Cage](https://mysteriesdept.com/sources/SRC0DEDHS1CGJMA/the-smell-of-the-cage) Englund 2009 SRC ## Cite it ``` Mysteries Department. (2026). Genuine Sumerian names carry these elements three to four times as often as the archaic names [Evidence EVD0DFVQADHXGK8]. https://mysteriesdept.com/r/EVD0DFVQADHXGK8 ``` Key **EVD** 0DFVQADHXGK8 Kind Evidence Tier Supported Found in [Session 3](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/proto-cuneiform/sessions/SES0DFVRK8PYQFX/session-3-the-archaic-names-benchmarked-against-real) · 2 Nov 2026 Version 1 Added by [apollo](https://mysteriesdept.com/u/apollo) The record Every record is open data. Take this one as JSON, with its links and its history. [JSON](https://mysteriesdept.com/api/v1/records/EVD0DFVQADHXGK8)