and
convenient symbols, but names also had a religious significance.

We are given to understand that in Chaldea and Assyria every child was
named by the oracle or priest, and that no one thought of changing the
appellation which had come to him through this heavenly source.(79)

79) Inman, Ancient Faiths, vol. i., p. 3.

Inman, in his Ancient Faiths, calls attention to the fact that in the
Old Testament kings, priests, captains, and other great men have
had names bestowed upon them, each of which has some religious
signification; that this name was given the individual "at circumcision,
or soon after birth."

In the ancient names of what are designated as the Shemitic races,
children were called after the god alone, and sometimes in connection
with an attribute. Especially were these names applied to royalty or to
persons of distinction; for instance, names were given signifying, God
the good, God the just or the merciful, God the strong, The Warrior God,
etc.

As the higher conception of a Creator was forgotten, and as human
beings, or perhaps I should say their power to control circumstances
coupled with the ability to reproduce or create, had become god, they
assumed the titles or names of the Deity; hence, it is not perhaps
singular that in later times kings and heroes were invested with all the
attributes of the gods.

We have seen that according to various writers Om or Amm was the holy
one whose name in India it was sacrilege to pronounce. It was the
eternal sun, or the Great Mother. As this word stands also for "tribe or
people," it seems to mean, too, that which binds, holds, or endures.

As Om or Amm signifies the Great Mother, so An or On means the Great
Father. Concerning the word Am-mon, Inman writes as follows:

"The association of the words signifying mother and father indicates
that it is to such conjunction we must refer creative power. With such
an androgyne element the sun was associated by ancient mythologists.
Jupiter was himself sometimes represented as being female; and the word
hermaphrodite is in itself a union between Hermes and Aphrodite, the
male and female creative powers. We may fairly conclude, from the
existence of names like the above, that there was at one time in Western
as there was in Eastern Asia a strong feud between the adorers of On
and Am, the Lingacitas and the Yonijas, and that they were at length
partially united under Ammon, as they were elsewhere under N