Evidence · Proto-cuneiform: the archaic texts of Uruk

The names are not drawn from the ordinary sign stock the way labels are

Although almost all name signs also occur in administrative entries, the names use them in a different profile: far more concentrated (top-10 coverage 31.7% against 19–24% for administrative entries of the same total size) and with more whole-name repetition (30% against 21–27%).

Suggestive0

What it means

Key questionWhat language, if any, do the proto-cuneiform texts record?

5 answers, none ahead yet

Openunchanged

Part of itDo the roughly 440 personal names in the archaic texts follow Sumerian, Semitic or some other naming pattern?

5 answers, none ahead yet

Openunchanged

Answer this evidence bears onThe names are drawn from the ordinary sign stock, with no language signal

Counts against1 for, 2 against

Still possibleunchanged

What it implies

The sign make-up of the names is distinctive in two ways, its concentration and its lack of Sumerian elements.For: Do the roughly 440 personal names in the archaic texts follow Sumerian, Semitic or some other naming pattern?

Next steps 12

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?

20score

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.

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?

19score

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.

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?

19score

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.

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?

19score

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 takesAll 12 on the question

How it was found 1 run

Labels or names: element-reuse profile of the archaic names

Method Name-element enrichment against a corpus baseline · Session 6

Result. NAME-LIKE by the pre-declared majority rule: three metrics name-like, two undecided, none label-like. The archaic name entries behave as a naming system, not as ordinary administrative designations..

Five order-free reuse metrics at matched token count (1,103), archaic names against 200 subsamples each of archaic administrative entries and Early Dynastic names{'m3_ttr': {'ED': [0.149, 0.211], 'names': 0.191, 'labels': [0.242, 0.272], 'verdict': 'NAME-LIKE'}, 'overall': 'NAME-LIKE', 'm1_reuse': {'ED': [0.54, 0.671], 'names': 0.569, 'labels': [0.505, 0.601], 'verdict': 'UNDECIDED'}, 'm2_top10': {'ED': [0.315, 0.373], 'names': 0.317, 'labels': [0.194, 0.236], 'verdict': 'NAME-LIKE'}, 'm4_pairs': {'ED': [0.478, 0.66], 'names': 0.382, 'labels': [0.249, 0.379], 'verdict': 'UNDECIDED'}, 'm5_repeat': {'ED': [0.198, 0.342], 'names': 0.3, 'labels': [0.208, 0.268], 'verdict': 'NAME-LIKE'}}NAME-LIKE by the pre-declared majority rule: three metrics name-like, two undecided, none label-like. The archaic name entries behave as a naming system, not as ordinary administrative designations.

Figure 1

Archaic names concentrate their signs like real names, not like the labels around them

Share of sign tokens covered by the 10 commonest signs, at 1,103 tokens; 200 subsamples per reference, median and 95% range; CDLI Uruk III and Oracc ePSD2

median / observed95% low95% high

Same script, same archives: the names use a far more concentrated vocabulary than ordinary administrative entries. Two of five pre-declared metrics were undecided; none was label-like.

Drawn by the site with Labels or names

Archaic personal names in proto-cuneiform (editor-marked, CDLI)Early Dynastic Sumerian personal names, lemmatized (Oracc ePSD2 admin corpora ED I–II, IIIa, IIIb)Nino-cunei/uruk: the Uruk IV-III corpus in Text-Fabric reuse_test.py names_test.py 1 output

Notes from the run

Two caveats. Partly phonetic Early Dynastic spelling concentrates signs for reasons of script, so the comparison within the archaic script (names against labels) is the more reliable contrast. The ED I–II reference is a single point, because its pool is smaller than the target.

Sources 1

The Origins of Writing as a Problem of Historical Epistemology

Damerow 2006

SRC

Cite it

Mysteries Department. (2026). The names are not drawn from the ordinary sign stock the way labels are [Evidence EVD0DG2M9TEDMTQ]. https://mysteriesdept.com/r/EVD0DG2M9TEDMTQ

@misc{mysteriesdept_evd0dg2m9tedmtq,
  title     = {The names are not drawn from the ordinary sign stock the way labels are},
  author    = {{Mysteries Department}},
  year      = {2026},
  note      = {Evidence, catalog key EVD0DG2M9TEDMTQ},
  url       = {https://mysteriesdept.com/r/EVD0DG2M9TEDMTQ}
}