Il nome del greco, dell’ebraico e del latino in armeno biblico : Tra glottonimia ed etnonimia

The article deals with the relation between ethnonyms and language names in Biblical Armenian, focusing on the three languages of the titulus crucis: Hebrew, Greek and Latin. In the Armenian translation of the Bible (5th Century A.D.) both John’s and Luke’s Gospels report that the inscription on the cross of Jesus was written ebrayecҳerēn ‘in Hebrew’, yownarēn ‘in Greek’ and dałmatarēn/ dałmaterēn ‘in Latin’. After analyzing the morphological formation of language names in Biblical Armenian, the article discusses the Iranian origin of the suix –arēn/–erēn and explores the linguistic and historical background of the Armenian glottonyms indicating Hebrew, Greek and Latin. The name of Latin dałmatarēn/dałmaterēn, clearly linked with the ethnonym Dalmatian, i.e., inhabitant of Dalmatia, is very remarkable. This way of naming Latin, unparalleled in the languages attested in the Late Antiquity, can be explained as a result of the interplay between external (historical) and internal (lexico–semantic) factors in 5th Century Armenian.