“Theophoric names as a matter of faith: the case of Mithras” Israel Campos Méndez, University of Las Palmas of Gran Canaria, Spain The use of theophoric names, embedding the name of a god in the personal name of individuals, is well-documented since ancient times in all Near East civilizations. However, the religious intention behind this tradition could also provide interesting information about everyday religious practices that are seldom taken into account. There are two possible explanations regarding the religious meaning of the usage of theophoric names: either, it represents an act of religious devotion by the individual’s progenitors or it is a personal option of the person, who chooses this name in a certain moment of his adult life. The premeditation in the election of this sort of names could be a relevant aspect that we cannot always disdain in this action, in part by the difficulty of obtaining complete information about the name-choice procedure in each case. Therefore the literature has frequently appealed to the "literal" meaning of the names, in order to suggest the reason of the election. Among the theophoric names of the ancient Persian area that we are going to study, there exist many references to the protection, the strength, the divine gift given by the divinity that appears in the name; nevertheless, it could be a mistake to attribute a correspondence between meaning and intention. It is very frequent in the compilation of mithraphoric names to find the presence of names ending in -dates (gift); -pata (protection); -tauman (forces). This line of research has been favored by many of the scholars who had adopted theoretical positions closer to the philology. However, we must clarify that in this study we want to focus on the aspects of religious-historical character derived of the presence of these mithraphoric names, leaving aside the philological implications present in their composition. This decision is justified by the fact that after a time many of these names have turned into stereotyped formulae, with only a remote relation (if any) with its original meaning. This idea is supported by the conclusion of R. Schmitt (1991, 128) about this subject: the religious value of theophorical names can be only granted to the first individuals who carried them; afterwards, the successive bearers of such names can be affected not only for some religious feeling, but for the tradition, the customs or many others motives. Therefore, there remain some questions around the presence of these names that cannot find an easy response: up to what point can we affirm that existed a relation between the persons who were carrying a theophoric name and the worship of this god? What links can be established between the devout references that are present in the own name and his carrier? In what measure does the election of a theophoric name reflect the devotion of the individual or of his parents who have chosen it? One of the aspects that draw the attention in relation with the theophoric names of Mithra is the verification of the wide variety of channels in which they have left track. In this respect, we find three principal sources wherefrom extracting the evidence of these names: the administrative tablets found in Persepolis; the mentions written by the classic authors who devoted themselves to report some events of the Persian history (for example the Greek-Roman contacts with Ancient Persia); and the testimonies provided by the inscriptions and the coins found in different regions of the Achaemenid Empire. Two points are particularly relevant in this study about the presence of the god Mithra in the conformation of personal names. First, the evidence of an exclusive repertoire of names of masculine genre. We do not ignore all the methodological preventions that have to be applied at the study of the information provided both by epigraphic and