Roman Nomenclature - With ADDENDUM

[TraianusHadrianusAugustus]

I am not sure if this has been covered in the forums as of yet. However, I figured that I would post some information on Roman nomenclature during the Republic. Forgive me if this post is somewhat long, but hopefully this is some helpful information. Feel free to make any replies or if anyone sees a mistake please point it out and I will either correct it or make sure that is is in fact correct and keep it.

Male Roman citizens in the time of the Republic generally had three names. These were the praenomen,
nomen, and cognomen. Most of the time, Romans had all three names but sometimes less non-aristocratic families only had a praenomen and cognomen. Praenomina were rarely, if ever, personal and were mostly used over and over again by a family. The first-born son was often named after his father. When it came to official documents, male citizens were designated by paternal ancestors and their "voting" tribe.

Men with two names could be given an additional "honorific" or cognomen. Basically, it was little more
than a senatorial nickname. In Roman times the adult son of a family who was not the first-born could be adopted by a family with no male heir. In time like these the adopted son took on all three names of his adoptive father and the adjective version of his clan or family name. (A good example is when Trajan adopted Hadrian.)

That basically covers everything for now. The next and final installment on Roman nomenclature will cover women as soon as I compile all the information and put it together in a nice and concise format.

Addendum on Cognomina: Cognomina were originally designed as a way to distinguish one branch of a particular family from another. The only time a cognomen was used for anything else was when it was describing some great achievement (like with Scipio Africanus) or some unusual personaltiy quirk or physical feature (far too many examples to mention ). Some Romans did not even have cognomina and the use of them did not become extremely popular in everyday conversation until later in the Republican years. Interesting fact, most of the name we use for Romans are in fact their cognomen like Nero and Commodus. You could not change or just decide on using a cognomen because it was either your family branche's name or an honorific given to one by the general populace, or at least the senate (hehe).

On Equestrians and Plebeians: Equestrians utilized the tria nomina system (praenomina, nomina, cognomina) of naming just like the patricians. The plebeians on the other hand did not always have cognomina and usually just stuck with using their nomen, but it really depended on that particular plebeian family.


I apologize for the lack of indentation. I am new to the forums and do not know how to fix that. Once I figure it out I will correct it immediately.


I found the indent button but could not get it to work properly, so I just spaced the paragraphs instead.

[Marcus Scaurus]

THA, Welcome on this forum! Nice first post by the way. I've always been interested in Roman names. Are you going to write more about nomenclature?

[Jesus The Inane]

Well nice information. I am looking forward to reading about the female names... However, it is against the Forum rules to double, and in this case, triple post. So next time use the edit button.

Oh, and welcome.

[Marcus Scaurus]

About the cognomen. How did they change? If I was Gaius Junius Pulcher, would I be able to name my son Quintus Junius Laevinus or was this simply impossible? It seems that in the late Republic cognomens didn't really represent the man anymore: the meaning of Caesar was 'hairy', quite strange for a man who wasn't hairy at all.

And, was it possible for plebs and equestrians to have cognomens?

[Diomedes]

The famalia name Caeser (pronounced Kaiser) is a reference to the fact that members of the famalia usually kept a full head of hair until their death Gaius Julius Ceaser is an expection to this trait.

In reference to the change of nomen and cognomen this was not possible. For the nomen represented your gens. (Cornelius) and the cognomen the famalia of that particular gens. to which you belong (Sulla). Also certain famalia had specific praenomen's for male children for example the famalia Ceaser had Sextus as the praenomen for the oldest boy and Gaius for the youngest.


By the way I intend to start a thread on the Roman patrician family names etc. Sometime....maybe....perhaps

Female names were simply the female version of the nomen. For example the daughter of Lucius Cornelius Sulla was called Cornelia and the daughter of Gaius Julius Ceaser Julia, etc.

Yes it was possible for members of the ordo equestor to have cognomens but it was very unusual for a plebeian to have one. BTW do you know the founder of the republic was not a partrician he was a equite. So RTW calling the Brutii a partrician family were wrong!!! I have been waiting for weeks to say that. lol

And to be totally correct the founder of the Republic was a Junius Brutus not just a Brutus.

Don't triple post.

- Torment

[Mímirswell]

You can't consecutively post Diomedes. You need to edit your threads to merge them and request for the excess to be deleted.

[Diomedes]

Sorry. I just kept remembering things and I forgot to click edit.

Won't happen again.

[Marcus Scaurus]

Titus Flavius Vespasianus (17-79 AD) was emperor for ten years (69-79). His father was Titus Flavius Sabinus. During the invasion of Britannia in 43, both Vespasian and his older brother Titus Flavius Sabinus were legati. So Vespasian's brother and father both had the same name, that's quite understandable. The weird thing is that all three men had the same praenomen (Titus) and that Vespasianus didn't had the cognomen 'Sabinus'. Does anyone know why? Was the oldest son the only one who could adopt his father's cognomen?

The name Vespasianus is a rare one, and ends with 'ianus'. Other important Roman men who had the same kind of name ('Aemilianus', 'Octavianus') were all adopted. Gaius Octavius was adopted by G. Julius Caesar in 44 and adopted the name Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus. Same goes with Aemilianus: he was born as Publius Aemilius Paullus and adopted the name Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus when he was adopted by the son of Scipio Africanus.

As far as I (and Wikipedia) knows, Vespasianus wasn't adopted. How did he get the cognomen Vespasianus?

[PyrrhusIV]

He took his mothers name, I just read about that today. If you want proof or more info, just ask, and i'll type it up . I believe it had to do with his mother having a more distinguished family than the father.

[Marcus Scaurus]

He took his mothers name, I just read about that today. If you want proof or more info, just ask, and i'll type it up . I believe it had to do with his mother having a more distinguished family than the father.

So he was born as Sabinus? Or did he took that name later? If he did, was this possible or against the traditions?

[Simetrical]

Female names were simply the female version of the nomen. For example the daughter of Lucius Cornelius Sulla was called Cornelia and the daughter of Gaius Julius Ceaser Julia, etc.

Yup, and multiples got numbered. If a Gaius Julius Caesar (gah-yoos yool-yoos kai-sahr) had two daughters, they'd be Julia Minora (yool-yah mee-naw-rah) and Julia Majora (mah-yaw-rah); more, and they'd be Prima (pree-mah), Secunda (seh-koon-dah), Tertia (tehrt-yah), etc. To be fair, there were only around fifteen praenomina (prai-naw-mee-nah) in common use, so the fact that girls didn't have one didn't make them much less individual than men; Gaius Julius Caesar's father, for instance, was named Gaius, and so was his grandfather, and his adopted son (although he had the added cognomen Octavianus [awk-tah-wee-ah-noos]).

For clarity's sake, filiation was usually used: Gaius Julius, son of Gaius, Caesar; Julia Majora, daughter of Gaius. When necessary, the grandfather's name was added: Gaius Julius, son of Gaius, grandson of Gaius, Caesar. If there were four generations in a row named the same thing, things started getting messy. There were undoubtedly hundreds of Gaius Julius Caesars contemporary with the famous one, and many would be fairly close relatives. Personally, I think our naming system is more useful.

Last tidbit: all the normal praenomina had abbreviations of one to three letters. The Latin words for son, filius (feel-yoos), and grandson, nepos (neh-pawss) were abbreviated to F and N respectively. For historical reasons, the name Gaius was abbreviated C, so Caesar's name in full would be C·IVLIVS·C·F·C·N·CAESAR. (There were far too many nomina to reliably abbreviate; they more closely resembled our surnames than praenomina resemble our first names, although they too were generally fewer in number, and there was the added restriction that they were mostly handed down in limited number from centuries prior and couldn't ever be changed.)

Edit: To address Red Baron's question, cognomina could be swapped around more easily than the other names. They weren't used on official documents until the late Republic; before then they were basically just nicknames. Cognomina could be inherited or adopted any which way, generally, although they typically weren't—by the mid to late Republic many (e.g., Caesar, Scipio, Brutus) had morphed into extensions of the nomen, and their inheritance was mostly dealt with similarly.

Oh, and for reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_naming_convention

[Rupertel]

Titus Flavius Vespasianus (17-79 AD) was emperor for ten years (69-79). His father was Titus Flavius Sabinus. During the invasion of Britannia in 43, both Vespasian and his older brother Titus Flavius Sabinus were legati. So Vespasian's brother and father both had the same name, that's quite understandable. The weird thing is that all three men had the same praenomen (Titus) and that Vespasianus didn't had the cognomen 'Sabinus'. Does anyone know why? Was the oldest son the only one who could adopt his father's cognomen?

The name Vespasianus is a rare one, and ends with 'ianus'. Other important Roman men who had the same kind of name ('Aemilianus', 'Octavianus') were all adopted. Gaius Octavius was adopted by G. Julius Caesar in 44 and adopted the name Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus. Same goes with Aemilianus: he was born as Publius Aemilius Paullus and adopted the name Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus when he was adopted by the son of Scipio Africanus.

As far as I (and Wikipedia) knows, Vespasianus wasn't adopted. How did he get the cognomen Vespasianus?

this is just a lucky shot, and quite likely it's going to miss...
but: janus is, afaik, the roman god of changes / new beginnings - so maybe the 'ianus' was added to the names to indicate this 'new beginning' of a new family member?
as for vespasianus, i don't know. maybe his father wanted to indicate that his first son was a stupid idiot and that he hoped for his second son to be less of a moron?