Ethnolinguistic diversity is one of the criteria often employed in defining empire. An empire includes diverse people under a unified political structure. It would be anachronistic to speak of nations in the ancient Near East. According to Mogens T. Larsen, "An empire can be defined as a supranational system of political control, whether its center is a city-state or a territorial state." This aspect of the problem surely presents considerable difficulties to historians. The only criterion of analysis in this case is personal names. However, onomastics-the study of how names are formed-requires careful handling. This period was long characterized as dominated by the conflict between southern and northern Babylonia, peopled with non-Semitic Sumerians and Semitic Akkadians, respectively. The rise of Babylonia to political power is said to have occurred under Sargon of Akkad. However, historians have realized that a century earlier, around 2500, half of the scribes of Abu Salabikh in southern Babylonia bore Semitic names. Accordingly, it has been suggested that Sumerian might have been a dead language by the middle of the third millennium, a hypothesis that mutes the problem of an alleged conflict between Sumerians and Akkadians. A recent study has reinstated a more traditional view. Based on a systematic onomastic survey, this study reaffirms the correlation between onomastics and ethnolinguistic appurtenance, and states that 80 percent of the inhabitants of Sumer bore Sumerian names. In Akkad in the north, the number of Sumerian names is dramatically smaller. More~ over, these onomastics were still creative and new names appeared, indicating that the language was still alive. Generally, bearers of Sumerian names must have spoken Sumerian, which was no longer the case in the early second millennium. Consequently, the ethnolinguistic factor may have played a nonnegligible role in the internal rebellions that punctuated the consolidation of the empire of Akkad.