Roman naming conventions

• 1. Introduction

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  Roman naming conventions once gave a single household three sons named Publius Lemonius, Lucius Lemonius, and Gaius Lemonius. All three shared one surname, yet each carried a different personal name. Nowhere else in ancient Europe or the Mediterranean did people organize names quite this way.

  Most other ancient cultures used a single personal name, built from two combined elements. That dithematic pattern allowed for hundreds, even thousands, of possible combinations. Rome and the other peoples of Italy instead paired a personal name with a hereditary surname. Over time, they kept attaching further names onto that pair.

  This layered system grew across roughly fourteen centuries, from the seventh century BC to the end of the seventh century AD. Grammarians eventually labeled its three central pieces the tria nomina. They treated that combination as a mark of true Roman citizenship. Yet not every Roman carried all three names. How many a person used shifted by era, by class, and by whether they were a man or a woman.

  Many of the specific names this system produced are still found in European languages today.

• 2. How A Name Was Built

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  By around 650 BC, people in Latium and Etruria already paired a personal name with a hereditary surname. The personal name, called the praenomen, distinguished children within a household. The surname, the nomen gentilicium, marked a family's shared descent.

  The historian Livy wrote that the kings of Alba Longa adopted Silvius as a nomen, honoring an ancestor of that name. As part of Rome's founding legend, the story cannot be treated as verified fact. It does show how far back the Romans themselves placed the custom.

  Most nomina were formed by adding a suffix, usually -ius, onto the stem of an existing word or name. A joining sound, such as -e-, -id-, -il-, or -on-, frequently linked the two parts. Many nomina began as patronymic surnames: Marcius came from the praenomen Marcus, originally meaning son of Marcus. Sextius, Publilius, and Lucilius arose the same way, from Sextus, Publius, and Lucius. Early nomina, like later European surnames, were not fixed, and could be adopted or dropped across generations. Other nomina came from words later treated as cognomina, such as Plancius from Plancus, or Flavius from Flavus. Still others came from place names, such as Norbanus from Norba.

  Latin nomina tended to end in -ius, -us, -aius, -eius, -eus, or -aeus. Oscan names often ended in -is or -iis. Umbrian names ended in -as, -anas, -enas, or -inas. Etruscan names ended in -arna, -erna, -ena, -enna, -ina, or -inna. Oscan and Umbrian forms mostly survive on inscriptions, while Roman literature usually Latinized them.

  Once the nomen became fixed, this same patronymic habit gave rise to another element, the filiation, which came to follow directly after it.

• 3. Filiation And Adoption

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  Lucius, the son of Marcus, would be written Lucius, Marci filius. Paulla, the daughter of Quintus, would be Paulla, Quinti filia. This patronymic habit predates even the nomen itself as an element of the Roman name. Filiations were normally abbreviated, written between the nomen and any cognomina. The abbreviation was followed by a mark for filius or filia, and in more formal inscriptions, for nepos or neptis, meaning grandson or granddaughter.

  Some filiations named the mother instead of the father, especially in families of Etruscan origin, using gnatus rather than filius or filia. A married woman's name was sometimes followed by her husband's name and uxor, meaning wife.

  A slave named Alexander, owned by Lucius Cornelius, would be identified in his filiation as slave of Lucius Cornelius. Once freed, he would typically take his former owner's praenomen and nomen, becoming Lucius Cornelius Alexander. He would keep his own original name as a cognomen, recorded as freedman of Lucius. Slaves and freedmen carried filiations of this kind throughout Roman history, naming an owner rather than a father.

  When a son of Lucius Aemilius Paullus was adopted by Publius Cornelius Scipio, he became Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus. Adoption in Roman culture served a different purpose than simply providing a home for a child. It existed mainly to keep a family line from dying out. This mattered especially among patricians, who were admitted to that rank only rarely after the expulsion of the kings. A man without sons to inherit his property would adopt a younger son from another family. That adopted son took on his new father's praenomen, nomen, and any hereditary cognomina, just as a natural-born eldest son would. Yet his original nomen did not disappear. It lived on as the root of his new surname, formed by adding -anus or -inus.

  Cognomina like Aemilianus, drawn from adoption, sat alongside a very different kind of surname, one earned on the battlefield rather than inherited.

• 4. Earning A Cognomen

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  Aulus Postumius Albus Regillensis earned his extra name for commanding the Roman army at the Battle of Lake Regillus. Gaius Marcius Coriolanus was named for capturing the town of Corioli. Marcus Valerius Corvus won his cognomen by defeating a giant Gaul in single combat, aided by a raven. Titus Manlius Torquatus defeated another Gaulish giant and took his name from the torque he claimed as a prize. Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus carried the Second Punic War into Africa and defeated Hannibal there.

  Rome's aristocracy began using personal cognomina like these at the very start of the Republic. Among the plebeians, who made up most of the Roman people, the practice was not widely used until the second century BC. Official records mostly omitted cognomina before that period, treating them as informal names. Under the Empire, from the second century onward, the cognomen became the principal element of the Roman name.

  Large families used cognomina to mark out separate branches, called stirpes, within a single gens. Some aristocratic Romans carried as many as three cognomina at once, some hereditary and some personal. A few prominent plebeian gentes, including the Antonii and the Marii, were never split into branches. For them, cognomina remained the exception rather than the rule.

  By the third century, having multiple cognomina had become the norm even for ordinary freeborn citizens.

• 5. Women Without A Praenomen

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  Servilius's two daughters, for example, would typically be called Servilia Major and Servilia Minor. Roman women originally used the same two-part naming pattern as men, a praenomen paired with a nomen. Because a woman kept her nomen for life, even after marriage, that name alone usually set her apart from other relatives. Latin nomina had distinct masculine and feminine endings, so a daughter's name already differed from her father's and her brothers'. By the end of the Republic, most Roman women no longer had or used a praenomen.

  A larger group of sisters might instead be ordered as Prima, Secunda, Tertia, and Quarta, or ranked as Maxima for the eldest. From the later Republic onward, these names functioned mostly as personal cognomina rather than true praenomina. It is often impossible to tell which role they were actually playing.

  Etruscan women held markedly higher social status than women at Rome, and inscriptions naming them almost always include a praenomen. Elsewhere, a woman without enough distinction from her nomen alone could be identified through her father or husband. Cicero, for instance, referred to one woman as Annia, daughter of Publius Annius the senator.

  The daughter of Lucius Caecilius Metellus was known as Caecilia Metella. As cognomina came to be treated as proper names late in the Republic, women were increasingly identified by one instead of by a nomen alone. Some women's cognomina took diminutive forms, such as Agrippina from the masculine Agrippa, or Drusilla from Drusus.

  In imperial times, Roman women, like men, eventually adopted informal alternate names known as signa in place of their traditional ones.

• 6. One Name For Everyone

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  In AD 212, the emperor Caracalla issued the Constitutio Antoniniana, granting citizenship to every free man living in the empire. Newly enfranchised citizens were expected to adopt a Roman name as part of that citizenship. Nearly all of them took the nomen Aurelius, honoring Caracalla, whose full name was Marcus Aurelius Severus Antoninus Augustus.

  Aurelius quickly became the single most common nomen in the eastern half of the empire. In the west, it ranked second only to Julius. Seven of the eleven emperors who ruled between Gallienus and Diocletian bore the name Marcus Aurelius: Claudius Gothicus, Quintillus, Probus, Carus, Carinus, Numerian, and Maximian.

  In the west, newly enfranchised citizens formed their names on the existing Roman pattern. In the east, they instead placed Aurelius before a version of their own non-Roman given name and a patronymic. Because Aurelius had become so common, it could no longer function as a true distinguishing name for anyone.

  The suffect consul of AD 118 or 119, Gaius Bruttius Praesens Lucius Fulvius Rusticus, carried two full sets of tria nomina. He combined his father's names with those of his maternal grandfather, Lucius Fulvius Rusticus. The consul of 169 AD, usually called Quintus Sosius Priscus, carried thirty-eight names across fourteen sets of nomina, reflecting three generations of pedigree. Among the aristocracy, this longer style of naming was already becoming fashionable before the mass citizenship grant of 212.

  Even the most conservative senatorial families had largely abandoned the praenomen by around 300 AD.

• 7. The Return To Single Names

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  By the fourth century, the praenomen had grown scarce in written records. Only the most conservative old Roman families, such as the Aurelii Symmachi, still used one by the fifth century.

  Through the sixth century, Roman institutions and social structures fell away one by one. The need to distinguish between a nomen and a cognomen disappeared along with them.

  By the end of the seventh century, the people of Italy and western Europe had reverted to single names. Modern European naming later developed independently of the Roman model, during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

  By the sixth century, however, traditional cognomina were increasingly prefixed with names carrying Christian religious significance, a habit that would outlast the Roman naming system.