Zoroaster

Zoroaster's name in his native language, Avestan, was probably Zaraϑuštra. His English name, "Zoroaster", and the derivatives from a later (5th century BCE) Greek transcription, Zōroastrēs (Ζωροάστρης), as used in Xanthus's Lydiaca (Fragment 32) and in Plato's First Alcibiades (122a1). This form appears subsequently in the Latin Zōroastrēs and, in later Greek orthographies, as Zōroastris. The Greek form of the name appears to be based on a phonetic transliteration or semantic substitution of the Avestan zaraϑ- with the Greek zōros (literally "undiluted") and the Avestan -uštra with astron ("star"). In Avestan, Zaraϑuštra is generally accepted to derive from an Old Iranian *Zaratuštra-; The element half of the name (-uštra-) is universally accepted to mean "camel". Reconstructions from later Iranian languages—particularly from the Middle Persian (300 BCE) Zardusht, which is the form that the name took in the 9th- to 12th-century Zoroastrian texts—suggest that *Zaratuštra- might be a zero-grade form of *Zarantuštra-. Subject then to whether Zaraϑuštra derives from *Zarantuštra- or from *Zaratuštra-, several interpretations have been proposed.