Transcribed Proper Names in Chinese Syriac Christian Documents

Christianity reached China in its Syriac guise in the seventh century. Christian documents written in Chinese which have come down to us from the period of the Tang Dynasty contain a large number of proper names which are, or appear to be, transcriptions of Syriac names. In this paper, originally published in Malphono w-Rabo d-Malphone: Studies in Honor of Sebastian P.Brock, the author provides a list of the transcribed proper names with their modern and reconstructed Middle Chinese pronunciations, together with the suggestions made by scholars in the past for the original forms of these names.