Cappadocius/Capadocius.
Apparently, according to one Dutch source (the website of a Dutch museum), there was once a Roman Emperor named Mauritius Cappadocius.At first, the name sounded Greek in my ears, because of the second element in the name. 'That must come from Greek dosis "giving",' I thought. I couldn't find out where the first element came from, though.But then I discovered via Google that there is an area in Turkey called Cappadocia - it is likely that the aforementioned Roman Emperor derived his name from that area. According to Wikipedia, Cappadocia derives its name from:Persian: Katpatuka meaning "the land of beautiful horses", Greek: Kappadokía.But suppose the name Cappadocius was actually Greek in origin. In the case of the Roman Emperor, he most likely derived his name from the aforementioned Turkish area. But could the name not also have been developed as an independent Greek name, unrelated to the Persian word but similar in appearance and spelling?If that were possible, it would obviously have been spelled as either Kappadosios or Kapadosios, with the second element coming from dosis "giving." What could the first element have been, assuming it were an authentic Greek name? I can now only think of the Greek letter kappa and the word karpos "fruit" (where the 'r' has disappeared).Do you happen to have any suggestions? I would appreciate that very much. :)Thank you in advance!

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This message was edited 12/18/2007, 5:53 PM

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I think the similarity to "dosis" is only superficial. I couldn't find any evidence of the name Kappadokia on the LGPN http://www.lgpn.ox.ac.uk/index.html which covers all Greek names recorded up to the 6th century.Here are some Greek words that begin with kapp*
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/resolveform?lookup=kapp&type=begin&lang=greek&searchText=&options=Sort+Results+Alphabetically&formentry=1&lang=greekMike
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