Their names read like the roster of a war band: Army-Leader, Wide-Ranging, Ruling-Around, People’s-War, Man-Persuader, Rich-in-Cattle. What you just read is a loose adaptation of Odysseus’s fight against the suitors from Book 22 of the Odyssey, with one odd choice: I translated the Greek names literally. This pattern, grafting two meaningful elements together, is extremely ancient, and extremely widespread: you see the same pattern not only in Ancient Greek names like Tele-machus ‘Far-Fight’ but also in medieval Germanic names like Æþel-stān ‘Noble-Stone’. Even more interesting, the elements that make up these two-part names are often the same in these different languages and traditions. In fact, the English names we use today inherit this tradition too, even though two-part names are now just one kind among many others.