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The Roman system of naming can seem a bit strange and daunting at first, but perciver and it can make sence.
All men from Patricain families had at least three names.
The first name or praenomen These were quite standered and are usually abbreviated. Varro a scholar of the late republican time put the number of traditional praenomen at thirty, and new names could appear, Sulla gave his son the name Faustus which meant fortunate. Here are some examples:-
The clan or gens name came second and is called the nomen .
This was followed by the family or part of the name the cognomem.
So L.Cornelius Balbus (his name was adopted, but I can use It as an example), is split up like this / L = Lucius the praenomen / Cornilius the clan name / Balbus the family name /.
Adoption was comman in Roman society. A man would take the name of the new father while keeping the old family name with a slite changed instead of the normal -ius ending it was replaced by the -ianus ending.
Slaves tuke their masters name while keeping their slave names as a cognomen.
With limited praenomen, a cognomen was needed to distingush one indervidual or family from another within a clan. So the cognomen was in many cases a nickname. So there was Maximus meaning tall, Glabrio meant bald or Paulus meaning small and our own Balbus which meant stammerer.
With time cognomen could be added L. Cornelius Sulla added Felix. P. Cornelius Scipio was givern Africanus for his victories in Africa.
Some of these names would only be held by a indervidual, others were passed on to there desendants. The family of Pompey kept the name of Magnus into the empire until it was taken away by Caligula.
However cognomen could easily accumilate growing to daunting levels, a Consul in AD169 had got up to having thirty-eight of them.
On the other hand, Plebeians had no nomen, only a first name and family name. For example Gaius Marius or Mark Antony.
A name showed standing, and women had little in Late Republican Roman society, so it is not suprising to find they had only one name. The feminine vertion of the nomen for patrician families, or the cognomen for plebeian families. So all the women born into the Julii were called Julia and those of Mark Antony were called Antonia. If there was more than one daugther the were often give the an extra name but only the very simple, majoria/minoria or prima/secunda differenchate them.
These are general rules not laws, there are many cases when the rules were broken.
Romans and Aliens, J.P.V.D. Balsdon
Europe, Norman Davies (Nomen)
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