Ilī-wēdêku, Mr. My god, I am alone
Ilī-wēdêku, Mr. My god, I am alone
Always a treat to find my favorite name: Ilī-wēdêku. His name means "my god, I am alone". Here, Mr. My-God-I-am-alone is witness to a marriage between Sin-iqišam and Ninlil-ninam in Nippur ca. 1830 BCE: TMH 10, 1 (P503174).
Further north at Assur and Kanesh, the name was spelled a bit differently: el-we-da-ku, once as el-e-da-ku. This shift between writing Ilī to el was likely due to vowel syncope, and it was particularly productive for names with the word ilum, "god", in it: Dannum-il, Ānah-il, Il-bāni.
Still in the north, we get to see the intervocalic /w/ transform into an /m/ in the name: el-me-da-ku. The shift from a PI-sign to an M-series sign (e.g. ME, MU, MA) took off around this time. We aren't sure if this change was phonemic (from a labial–velar to bilabial nasal sound) or orthographic.
Benjamin Suchard (@bnuyaminim.bsky.social): merging of /m/ and /w/?
Spy In The House Öf The Night (@toytowns.bsky.social): Social context of the name Ilī-wēdêku?
N.b.: While renaming is a known phenomenon in antiquity (Dirbas 2017: 30), the practice is not associated with replacement and compensation names as the post suggests.