Roman Names

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A Roman name could identify family, ancestry, legal status and social position as well as the individual. The familiar tria nomina consisted of praenomen, nomen and cognomen, but it was never a rule applied uniformly to every person or every period. Women, enslaved people, freedpeople, provincials and adopted persons followed different and changing practices.

In brief:

• praenomen: an individual name used within the family;
• nomen: the name of a gens;
• cognomen: a personal or hereditary additional name;
• agnomen: a further name, often linked to adoption, distinction or family branching.

A name and a toga could work as complementary signs of public identity: one identified the citizen, while the other displayed civic status and role.

Praenomen

The praenomen was the element closest to a personal given name. The pool used by elite Roman families was small, and inscriptions normally abbreviated common forms: A. for Aulus, C. for Gaius, L. for Lucius, M. for Marcus, P. for Publius and Q. for Quintus, among others. The spelling of an abbreviation can preserve archaic conventions, as C. for Gaius and Cn. for Gnaeus demonstrate.

Less common praenomina, including Agrippa, Faustus, Nero, Proculus and Vopiscus, were usually written in full. Numeral names such as Quintus, Sextus and Decimus did not necessarily state a child's actual birth order once they had become conventional personal names.

A child received a name during the first days after birth. Sons often repeated names used by their father and earlier ancestors, and individual gentes preferred a restricted set. This repetition makes the other elements of a Roman name essential for distinguishing relatives. Ancient stories about a praenomen being banned within a family after disgrace illustrate the political memory attached to names, although the details of such traditions are not always easy to verify.

Nomen

The nomen identified the gens, a broad descent group rather than a modern nuclear family. In the classical period masculine nomina often ended in -ius, as in Tullius, Iulius and Claudius, while names of Italian and provincial origin followed other patterns. In inscriptions the nomen was usually written in full, though very familiar names could be abbreviated.

Many nomina were already ancient in the historical period, and their original meanings were uncertain even to Roman scholars. Antiquarian etymologies linked some to numbers, animals, plants or physical traits, but these explanations should be treated cautiously.

Elite families also used ancestry as political language. Julius Caesar, for example, connected the Julian gens with Iulus, Aeneas and Venus. Such genealogies expressed prestige and legitimacy; they were not modern historical pedigrees.

Cognomen

A cognomen began as an additional name and could refer to appearance, character, origin or a memorable event. Many cognomina later became hereditary and distinguished branches within a gens: the Cornelii Scipiones, for example, were one branch of the wider Cornelian gens.

Not every Roman possessed a cognomen, especially in earlier periods, and practice differed between families. By the late Republic and Empire, however, cognomina were widespread and often more useful than the praenomen for identifying an individual. Familiar examples include Crassus, Rufus, Severus and Strabo, but a literal translation does not necessarily explain why a particular family bore the name.

Agnomen

A further name is often described as an agnomen. Roman usage was less rigid than modern textbook diagrams suggest, but the term is useful for an additional name acquired through distinction, adoption or the need to separate closely related branches.

Victorious commanders could receive names commemorating a campaign. Publius Cornelius Scipio was called Africanus after the victory over Hannibal, and Lucius Aemilius Paullus received Macedonicus after defeating King Perseus. Sulla used Felix, "fortunate," as an additional name.

Adoption also reshaped names. An adopted man normally took the adopter's name and could preserve a modified form of his former nomen. Gaius Octavius, adopted in Caesar's will, became Gaius Julius Caesar; the conventional historical label Octavian distinguishes his earlier career but was not his normal mature name.

Women's Names

Roman women's naming practices varied by period and family. In the late Republic and early Empire, an elite woman was often known by the feminine form of her nomen, such as Tullia, Iulia or Cornelia. Sisters could be distinguished by Maior and Minor or by ordinal names such as Secunda and Tertia. Women could also bear cognomina, particularly under the Empire.

Marriage did not normally replace a woman's birth name with her husband's name in the modern manner. Inscriptions might identify her through her father's name, filiation, husband or other relatives. The tomb of Caecilia Metella on the Via Appia, for example, names her through her own family and her relationship to Crassus. Such formulas record legal and social connections rather than a fixed first-name-plus-surname system.

Names of Enslaved People

Enslaved people in Roman society bore individual names, but the form used in a document could also identify an owner and legal condition. Archaic formations such as Marcipor or Lucipor combine an owner's praenomen with puer, "boy," but the much larger body of later evidence contains Greek, Latin and other names.

Names might refer to origin, appearance, occupation, mythology, plants or desirable qualities. Greek names were common without proving that every bearer was ethnically Greek. Felix and Faustus, both meaning "fortunate," occur frequently. A person born in slavery could be called Verna, while names such as Dacus or Syrus might claim a geographical association.

In inscriptions an owner's name commonly appears in the genitive, sometimes with servus abbreviated as ser. Occupational labels could follow. Because naming depended on household, market and documentary context, there was no single formula used for all enslaved people.

Names of Freedpeople

After manumission, a freedman commonly adopted the praenomen and nomen of his former owner, now his patron, and retained his earlier personal name as a cognomen. Cicero's secretary Tiro therefore became Marcus Tullius Tiro. Practice could vary, especially for women, imperial freedpeople and people freed by communities or corporations.

In inscriptions libertus or liberta was abbreviated after the patron's name. Imperial freedpeople could be marked Augusti libertus. These formulas are valuable because they connect a name to legal status, patronage and occupation.

The nomen Publicius could identify someone freed by a municipality, while corporate or institutional connections generated other names. A Greek cognomen does not by itself prove recent migration or enslavement; it must be read together with filiation, status abbreviations and the inscription's archaeological context.

Related Topics

• Roman citizenship
• Roman society
• Patricians
• Plebeians
• Slavery in Rome

Literature

• Fedorova, E. V. Vvedenie v latinskuiu epigrafiku [Introduction to Latin Epigraphy]. Moscow, 1982, pp. 85-101.

• Kajanto, Iiro. The Latin Cognomina. Helsinki, 1965.

• Schulze, Wilhelm. Zur Geschichte lateinischer Eigennamen. Berlin, 1904.