I've recently become a bit obsessed with Mesopotamian mythology and was wondering if anyone could point me to a resource about family names or the equivalent from this area at the oldest time that we can say something with any degree certainty, even if it contains some degree of reasonable speculation.
I realize that family names may not have been a "thing" then but I'm sure there would have been some common way to to specify who someone was such as Bob, the daughter Zdpt or something. Still this is something I haven't found much on for, especially for the period before about 600 B.C.E.
I do have access to my university library and online journals but our search tools are not very great, so feel free to point me to some of those.
It's my first time asking a question on here so please go easy on me :-)
To the best of my knowledge, last names were patronymics. Those who did not have patronymics, ie children of prostitutes, used matronymics or the patronymics of their grandfathers. (Diankonoff 1986: 237)
If you're interested in titles, I suggest checking out William Hallo, Early Mesopotamian royal titles : a philologic and historical analysis.
citations: Diakonoff, I. M. "Women in Old Babylonia Not under Patriarchal Authority." Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 29.3 (1986), 225-238. Web.
The genealogy made the name, and in semitic cultures genealogy are very important, even to this day. Moreover the first son (at least in babylon in the hellenistic period) was often named after his grand-father, so basically two names repeated over and over in the elder branch. Sadly I can't recover the paper where I read that.