Wikipedia lists some ancient Greek names along with their meanings:

• Nikomachos from nike "victory" and mache "battle"
• Sophokles from sophos "wise, skilled" and kleos "glory"
• Polykrates from poly "much" and kratos "power"

Did ancient Greeks use these names always, or did they use other nick-names most of the time? My western mind finds it very hard to imagine people saying 'What's up, Victory-Battle? Not too much thanks Skilled-Glory!' Apart from anything else Nikomachos is quite a mouthful.

Do we have any way of knowing this?

[1] (http://espressostalinist.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/soviet-troops-in-czechoslovakia.jpg)

[2] (http://albumwar2.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/39451.jpg)

[3] (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/Soviet_liberators_marching_through_the_Korean_county_road._October_1945.jpg)

Caps instead of helmets in every picture. Was there a shortage of metal or something?

This image was part of a thread in /r/funny

Did this ever actually exist? Was this sort of depiction in art common?

Here is the rest of the imgur album. There are some more strange images, any insights into why these strange depictions exist would be appreciated.

/r/askreddit lead me to the phantom time hypothesis, and I was hoping /r/AskHistorians could explain the history of the hypothesis to me.

I'm not really interested in a debunking of the theory, that seems simple enough. I'm more curious about the history of the theory. Who is Heribert Illig and why did he he want to believe it? Why would somebody subscribe to the hypothesis (both valid reasons for belief and reasons why that person would really want it to be true)? Is there anybody (or any group) who would benefit from people believing this hypothesis?

One argument that I often see on Reddit and other places on the internet is that various Christian holidays or traditions, such as Easter and Christmas are just "ripoffs of pagan traditions." I'm talking about stuff like this.

Whether people claim that Easter = Eostre or that Christmas = Saturnalia, the recurring theme in these kinds of posts is that the Christians "stole" these pagan traditions and claimed it as their own. Is there anything... well, wrong with these kinds of claims?

I'm no expert on history by any means, but some of the problems that I think I've found is that "pagan" is a very broad, unspecific category to use in such a claim as "Christians stole x from the pagans", and that similarities in mythological tradition are not necessarily indicative of appropriation or direct influence (as seems to be implied in these kinds of claims).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_on_Jesus

Considering that most ancient primary sources only survive through later (i.e. Christian or Muslim) copies, how can historiographers tease out which parts are true and which parts are false?

Hi everyone, and welcome to Monday Methods. As is customary, here is the list of past MM threads

We are back from our brief hiatus, and we have a special program today. We will be talking terminology today, specifically about the definition of the term "tribe".

I have already asked several of our flaired experts to consider these following questions, and write up their perspective.

• Does your field use the term Tribe?

• What meaning/definition does the term have in your specialty?

• If your specialty has moved away from the term, when and why did this come about?

• What words do you use in place of Tribe?

Of course, comments from the readership is welcomed. If your field of study uses the word Tribe, or has chosen not to use the word, feel free to add your perspective.

Also, if you have any follow up questions to add to the ones listed, we welcome those.

Next weeks question will be (serious this time)- How do you deal with elements of your study that attract disproportionate attention?

I recently found some articles this one that bring up the idea of the U.S purchasing Siberia. Was this an actual offer? And if so, how serious was this offer?