When people had one name

Thinkin’ about the New Testament bros: Mark, John, James, etc when I came across this from Bob Dylan.

Those songs are just in my genes, and I couldn’t stop them comin’ out. In a reincarnative kind of way, maybe. The songs have got some kind of a pedigree to them. But that pedigree stuff, that only works so far. You can go back to the ten-hundreds, and people only had one name. Nobody’s gonna tell you they’re going to go back further than when people had one name.

(Bob Dylan interview with Jonathan Lethem in Rolling Stone.)