# Early Dynastic dependent workers carry Sumerian name elements as strongly as everyone else, so class does not explain… > Restricted to the names in ED IIIb ration lists for dependent workers (geme, arad, iginudu), the Sumerian name elements appear in 60% of 6,894 names… Source: https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/proto-cuneiform/evidence/EVD0DG2CQD3YKAF/early-dynastic-dependent-workers-carry-sumerian-name 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 # Early Dynastic dependent workers carry Sumerian name elements as strongly as everyone else, so class does not explain… Restricted to the names in ED IIIb ration lists for dependent workers (geme, arad, iginudu), the Sumerian name elements appear in 60% of 6,894 names (odds ratio 4.72, 95% 4.57–4.87), and in 65% of 5,142 after removing officials and names recurring in 30 or more texts (odds ratio 4.60, 4.45–4.77); the Uruk III dependents' names reach 12.4% (odds ratio 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 lack the Sumerian name profile](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/proto-cuneiform/answers/ANS0DFVR69H9JFW/the-names-lack-the-sumerian-name-profile) Supports5 for, none against **Still possible** unchanged What it implies 1. The class caveat on the names result is answered for Early Dynastic Lagash: dependents there have fully Sumerian name profiles, so the archaic gap is not a property of dependent status as such.For: Do the roughly 440 personal names in the archaic texts follow Sumerian, Semitic or some other naming pattern? 1. Three readings remain for the archaic names: a foreign population that kept its own names, scribes who did not speak Sumerian, or name entries that were labels rather than spellings of 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 [Dependents-only Sumerian benchmark (ED IIIb ration lists)](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/proto-cuneiform/runs/RUN0DG2CWRH4M9P/dependents-only-sumerian-benchmark-ed-iiib-ration-lists) Method [Name-element enrichment against a corpus baseline](https://mysteriesdept.com/methods/MTH0DFQRJYNCY4T/name-element-enrichment-against-a-corpus-baseline) · [Session 4](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/proto-cuneiform/sessions/SES0DG2D3CCNKMT/session-4-dependents-only-benchmark-the-names-gap-is-not-a) **Result.** The gap survives matching on class. Early Dynastic dependents' names carry the Sumerian elements as strongly as the whole corpus or more, so H-NAMES-NOTSUMERIAN passes its dependents-only kill test. ED IIIa could not be tested because no ration lists are lemmatized in this form.. Token odds ratio of Englund's Sumerian name elements in dependent workers' names against the period's other words; share of names with at least one element against a length-matched null**{'D2_strict': {'n': 5142, 'null': 0.217, 'or_95': [4.45, 4.77], 'share': 0.65, 'texts': 88, 'odds_ratio': 4.6}, 'ED_IIIb_all': {'n': 31083, 'or_95': [4.39, 4.55], 'share': 0.528, 'odds_ratio': 4.47}, 'D3_line_level': {'n': 35, 'null': 0.171, 'or_95': [1.57, 5.08], 'share': 0.429, 'texts': 22, 'odds_ratio': 3.25}, 'D1_ration_lists': {'n': 6894, 'null': 0.209, 'or_95': [4.57, 4.87], 'share': 0.603, 'texts': 99, 'odds_ratio': 4.72}, 'Uruk_III_archaic': {'n': 540, 'or_95': [1.09, 1.6], 'share': 0.124, 'odds_ratio': 1.35}}** The gap survives matching on class. Early Dynastic dependents' names carry the Sumerian elements as strongly as the whole corpus or more, so H-NAMES-NOTSUMERIAN passes its dependents-only kill test. ED IIIa could not be tested because no ration lists are lemmatized in this form. Figure 1 Sumerian dependent workers' names carry the stock name elements as strongly as anyone's; the Uruk III dependents' names do not Odds ratio of Englund's Sumerian name elements in names against the corpus's other words, 95% bootstrap intervals; Oracc ePSD2 ED IIIb and CDLI Uruk III odds ratio95% low95% high Dependent definitions were fixed before scoring. ED IIIa has no lemmatized ration lists in this form. Drawn by the site with [Dependents-only Sumerian benchmark (ED IIIb ration lists)](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/proto-cuneiform/runs/RUN0DG2CWRH4M9P/dependents-only-sumerian-benchmark-ed-iiib-ration-lists) [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)[dep_benchmark.py][ed_benchmark.py][1 output](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/proto-cuneiform/runs/RUN0DG2CWRH4M9P/dependents-only-sumerian-benchmark-ed-iiib-ration-lists#outputs) ## Sources 3 [Age, Gender and Labor: Recording Human Resources in 3350–2500 BC Mesopotamia](https://mysteriesdept.com/sources/SRC0DFQR2QXTX54/age-gender-and-labor-recording-human-resources-in-33502500) Bartash 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). Early Dynastic dependent workers carry Sumerian name elements as strongly as everyone else, so class does not explain… [Evidence EVD0DG2CQD3YKAF]. https://mysteriesdept.com/r/EVD0DG2CQD3YKAF ``` Key **EVD** 0DG2CQD3YKAF Kind Evidence Tier Supported Found in [Session 4](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/proto-cuneiform/sessions/SES0DG2D3CCNKMT/session-4-dependents-only-benchmark-the-names-gap-is-not-a) · 3 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/EVD0DG2CQD3YKAF)