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Zoroaster’s name in his native language, Avestan, was probably Zaraθuštra. His translated name, “Zoroaster”, derives from a later (5th century BC) 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 Ζωροάστρις, Zōroastris. The Greek form of the name appears to be based on a phonetic transliteration or semantic substitution of Avestan zaraθ- with the Greek ζωρός, zōros (literally ‘undiluted’) and the BMAC substrate -uštra with ἄστρον, astron, ‘star’.
