Roman naming conventions

Over the course of some fourteen centuries, the Romans and other peoples of Italy employed a system of nomenclature that differed from that used by other cultures of Europe and the Mediterranean Sea, consisting of a combination of personal and family names.

Here, Lemonius is the nomen, identifying each person in the family as a member of the gens Lemonia; Publius, Lucius, and Gaius are praenomina used to distinguish between them.

[1][2] In the later empire, members of the Roman aristocracy used several different schemes of assuming and inheriting nomina and cognomina, both to signify their rank, and to indicate their family and social connections.

Over the course of the sixth century, as Roman institutions and social structures gradually fell away, the need to distinguish between nomina and cognomina likewise vanished.

[3][non-primary source needed] Names of this type could be honorific or aspirational, or might refer to deities, physical peculiarities, or circumstances of birth.

[citation needed][ii] In Latin, most nomina were formed by adding an adjectival suffix, usually -ius, to the stem of an existing word or name.

Other cognomina commemorated important events associated with a person; a battle in which a man had fought (Regillensis), a town captured (Coriolanus); or a miraculous occurrence (Corvus).

[1] Although originally a personal name, the cognomen frequently became hereditary, especially in large families, or gentes, in which they served to identify distinct branches, known as stirpes.

However, a number of distinguished plebeian gentes, such as the Antonii and the Marii, were never divided into different branches, and in these families cognomina were the exception rather than the rule.

[v] Although there was no law restricting the use of specific praenomina,[vi] the choice of the parents was usually governed by custom and family tradition.

Another confusing practice was the addition of the full nomenclature of maternal ancestors to the basic tria nomina, so that a man might appear to have two praenomina, one occurring in the middle of his name.

The descendants of those who had been granted citizenship by the Constitutio Antoniniana seem to have dispensed with praenomina altogether, and by the end of the western empire, only the oldest Roman families continued to use them.

A gens, which may be translated as "clan", constituted an extended Roman group of individuals, all of whom shared the same nomen and claimed descent from a common ancestor.

[1] Like the nomen, cognomina could arise from any number of factors: personal characteristics, habits, occupations, places of origin, heroic exploits, and so forth.

[2] Although the nomen was a required element of Roman nomenclature down to the end of the western empire, its usefulness as a distinguishing name declined throughout imperial times, as an increasingly large portion of the population bore nomina such as Flavius or Aurelius, which had been granted en masse to newly enfranchised citizens.

As Roman institutions vanished, and the distinction between nomen and cognomen ceased to have any practical importance, the complex system of cognomina that developed under the later empire faded away.

Roman history is filled with individuals who obtained cognomina as a result of their exploits: Aulus Postumius Albus Regillensis, who commanded the Roman army at the Battle of Lake Regillus; Gaius Marcius Coriolanus, who captured the city of Corioli; Marcus Valerius Corvus, who defeated a giant Gaul in single combat, aided by a raven; Titus Manlius Torquatus, who likewise defeated a Gaulish giant, and took his name from the torque that he claimed as a prize; Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus, who carried the Second Punic War to Africa, and defeated Hannibal.

This was the most democratic of Rome's three main legislative assemblies of the Roman Republic, in that all citizens could participate on an equal basis, without regard to wealth or social status.

[16][17] Geography was not the sole determining factor in one's tribus; at times efforts were made to assign freedmen to the four urban tribes, thus concentrating their votes and limiting their influence on the comitia tributa.

However, in both writing and inscriptions, the tribus is found with much less frequency than other parts of the name; so the custom of including it does not seem to have been deeply ingrained in Roman practice.

[1] The first of these reasons is probably[weasel words] that the praenomen itself lost much of its original utility following the adoption of hereditary surnames; the number of praenomina commonly used by both men and women declined throughout Roman history.

[citation needed] For men, who might hold public office or serve in the military, the praenomen remained an important part of the legal name.

[citation needed] Finally, with the fall of the western empire in the fifth century, the last traces of the distinctive Italic nomenclature system began to disappear, and women too reverted to single names.

[xiii][1] The Constitutio Antoniniana promulgated by Caracalla in AD 212 was perhaps the most far-reaching of many imperial decrees enfranchising large numbers of non-citizens living throughout the empire.

[19][non-primary source needed] Although the Octavii were an old and distinguished plebeian family, the gens was not divided into stirpes and had no hereditary cognomina; Octavius' father had put down a slave revolt at Thurii and was sometimes given the surname Thurinus (a cognomen ex virtute), but this name was not passed down to the son.

[citation needed] At the age of eighteen in 44 BC, Octavius was nominated magister equitum by his granduncle, Gaius Julius Caesar, who held the office of dictator.

[citation needed] In subsequent generations, all reigning emperors assumed Imperator as an additional praenomen (usually without foregoing their original praenomina), and Augustus as a cognomen.

[citation needed] Caesar came to be used as a cognomen designating an heir apparent; and for the first two centuries of the empire, most emperors were adopted by their predecessors.

[22] In order to reflect an illustrious pedigree or other connections, the aristocracy expanded the binary nomenclature concept to include other nomina from an individual's paternal and maternal ancestry.

[26] Ultimately, the ubiquity of "Aurelius" meant that it could not function as a true distinguishing nomen, and became primarily just a badge of citizenship added to any name.