Expressing lineage in Roman and Late Antique petitions and contracts: A variationist perspective

Onomastic studies typically state that lineage (the patronymic in particular) was expressed in Ancient Greek through the use of the genitive case. In this study, which is based on an extensive corpus of Roman and Late Antique petitions and contracts, I show that the actual situation was much more complex: up to eight different lineage expressions are attested. In line with recent variationist studies, I take it that variation in language is not random and try to connect the different types of lineage expressions to a number of parameters of variation, that is, diachronic, social, and text-internal factors.