Arsaces

Arsaces rides down from the mountainous edges of the ancient world, the Greek rendering of an Old Iranian name borne by the founder of the Parthian dynasty in the third century BCE. For nearly five hundred years, successive kings of that line took Arsaces as a throne name, until the word itself became a shorthand for Parthian sovereignty. It is vanishingly rare today, preserved mainly in classical scholarship and in Armenian families keeping older forms alive. Three clean syllables, AR-sa-kes, with the dry authority of a coin inscription. A name for a boy expected to read deeply and travel far.