Ptolemy is the English form of the Ancient Greek name Πτολεμαῖος (Ptolemaios), a derivative of πτόλεμος, an Epic form of πόλεμος 'war'[3][note 1] and the suffix -αῖος-aios meaning 'pertaining' or 'belonging to'. A nephew of Antigonus I Monophthalmus was called Polemaeus,[4] the normal form of the adjective. Ptolemaios is first attested in Homer's Iliad and is the name of an Achaean warrior, son of Piraeus, father of Eurymedon.[5]
The name Ptolemaios varied over the years from its roots in ancient Greece, appearing in different languages in various forms and spellings:
The name Ptolemy spread from its Greek origins to enter other languages in Western Asia during the Hellenisation that followed the conquest of the known world by Alexander the Great.
The Aramaic name Bar-Talmai 'son of Talmai' (Greek Bartolomaios, English Bartholomew) may be related (Bartholomew the Apostle is thus thought to have been the son of a Ptolemy.)³
Ptolemais is formed from this name by the Greek feminine adjectival ending -i(d)s.
Claudius Ptolemaeus
Ptolemy commonly refers to Claudius Ptolemaeus (ca. 90 AD–ca. 168 AD), a writer, geographer, mathematician, astronomer and astrologer who lived in the Alexandrine Greek culture of Roman Egypt.
Ptolemy was the name of several pharaohs of the Ptolemaic dynasty who ruled Hellenistic Egypt for nearly 300 years, from 305 BC to 30 BC. The Greco-Egyptian pharaonic dynasty of Macedonian origin was established by Ptolemy I Soter (303–282 BC), and the male dynastic successors were all also named Ptolemy. Dynasty members who ruled Egypt include:
Ptolemy son of Abubus, governor of Jericho (ca. 130 BC) in the First Book of the Maccabees; instigated the death of Simon Maccabees; and for whom Dante named the section of Hell reserved for traitors to guests ('Ptolemaea')
Ptolemy (son of Mennaeus) (rule ended ca. 40 BC), governor of biblical Abilene, a district of the disputed region of Coele-Syria
Ptolemy's Gate, published 2005, is the third book in The Bartimaeus Trilogy, a fantasy series by the English author Jonathan Stroud. The series includes a character called Ptolemy, from 2nd century BC Ptolemaic Egypt, who is nephew to Ptolemy VIII and cousin to Ptolemy IX
Ptolemaic Terrascope is a magazine founded in 1989. The name was inspired by "Ptolemy the turtle, who lives at Terrascope Towers". Various artworks and logos feature an astronomer peering through a 'terrascope', so Ptolemaic may here refer to Claudius Ptolemaeus
The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey is a novel by Walter Mosley, later adapted into a miniseries of the same name, whose titular character is a lonely 93-year-old man with dementia.
^The change from polemos to ptolemos is an example of a type of linguistic compounding called terpsimbrotos. The pt- in ptolemos (vs. earlier polemos) "war" is thought to arise from a re-analysis of the compound word *phere-t-polemos, metathesised to phere-ptolemos. George Dunkel, "Two old problems in Greek: πτόλεμος and τερψίμβροτος", Glotta70:3/4:197-225 (1992) JSTOR40266932.
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