I can’t remember my Roman history so I’ve been doing some reading. The thing is, they all have the same names over and over and over, with a Gaius Gaius here and a Gaius Gaius there. Here a Gaius, there a Gaius, everywhere a Gaius Gaius.
What I wouldn’t give for a Savannah or a Madysyn at this point.
Did the Romans find Roman names as confusingly overused as I do?
Quite possibly; I’ve heard that the Chinese have problems with their own names. I recall reading about a Chinese trial where the judge, prosecutor, and accused all had the same name, as well as another fellow who was arrested earlier by mistake because he had that name. As an old culture ( which is why I think this example probably applies to the Romans ), many of their family names have died out over the centuries, leaving more and more people with the same one; the phenomenon is called “patronymic collapse” IIRC. The Chinese, or so I’ve heard, have some sort of traditional system for choosing children’s personal names as well, with the result that many have the same name; I don’t know if the Romans did anything similar.
Possibly, but there are other ways to tell Gaius from Gaius. The list of names you see over and over (I think there are less than 20 of them for men) were only one part of the name. Roman names had three parts, praenomen, nomen, and cognomen. The *praenomen *are the names you are referring to - Gaius, Tiberius, Claudius, etc. The *nomen *denoted your family branch, or *gens *- like Julius. Then there is the cognomen. Well, not everyone got a *cognomen *- these are sort of nicknames, like Caesar (which is odd in that it became a title; it means hairy). Pompey picked *Magnus *as his cognomen, trying to associate himself with Alexander the Great.
Women’s names followed much the same pattern, but they got very generic names. It was based in part on *gens *and partly on birth order, so you get Julia Prima for the eldest, Julia Secunda for the second born, and so on. If there are only two you have Julia Major and Julia Minor.
Names among slaves and such do not follow this pattern. There are inscriptions to beloved royal slaves. A lot of the time you just see Gaius and Gaia - generic slave names. Sometimes you get something way out there, like Daphne or something. Of course citizens outside the city had local conventions.
The Wiki article on Roman naming conventions is a little more in-depth.
Random aside, but “patronymic collapse” is an interesting phrase…it only appears on a single page on Google, and it isn’t this page. 
EDIT: Bleh, appears to be a keyword list on some sort of…unsavory…website.
Just to nitpick here, but Claudius wasn’t a praenomen, it was a nomen. Tiberius was actually a praenomen used a lot by the Claudians. (So for instance, you have the Emperor Tiberius, real name Tiberius Claudius Nero, and his nephew, called the Emperor Claudius, but his real name was Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus)
It’s one of those things where I know just enough to get me into trouble when I try to remember the names. I can always remember that Caligula was a cognomen that meant “little boots,” but I still get everyone confused, and lordy but when they start divorcing and marrying the adopted son of their own great-grandpa’s mule I… well I need a chart.
So I found a chart on Wiki and I still got lost! I could handle the Egyptians, but these Romans are kicking my butt.
Sorry it would be more correct for me to say “Imperial”. Augustus’ ghost may haunt me for that error. What can I say, my work is in Egypt lately.
:smack: Yes I was incorrect, sorry. I still get confused by Roman names sometimes too!
The stemmata on roman-emperors.org are pretty useful to keep track of ranking families, but it is still some nutty nutty stuff trying to keep it all straight. I think I had something like 4 different charts of Augustus’s family for one class and I still can’t remember who was banging who the whole time.
They probably didn’t give it much thought. They were just Gaius’, you know?
Why is Augustus’ ghost gonna be annoyed? Is it because the Etruscans left the Romans soured on the whole “royalty” thing, and Augustus wanted to maintain the pretense that the Imperial family was a different sort of thing?
Exactly.
The answer: I bet.
Making the standard praenomen/nomen/cognomen thing even more fun were the facts that: (note: all of the below apply exclusively to Republican conventions. Things get different in the Empire)
I’m convinced they all just used nicknames, or in some way de facto assigned one name to one person, that we don’t know about (and my advisor agrees).
Historians tended (and tend) to, sensibly, pick one name per one person. So we talk about Caligula, even though his name was really Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus etc. etc. I promise you that, if I looked, I’d find at least one instance of an ancient historian (probably Greek, though, not Roman) getting the names confused, and I’ll tell you modern historians still do.
Ugh, sorry this was so incoherent. I’ve just read/skimmed four books on Republican history in the past eight hours. Please ask if there’s anything you’d like me explain further about.
Okay, why are you torturing yourself in that way?
Actually, it’s helpful to learn that I’m not alone. I was feeling like I had a missing remembering-Roman-names gene or something.
Good question! In the narrow sense, I have my PhD candidacy essay due in a week. In the wider sense, I have no idea.
I’m glad I could make you feel better. I have spent countless hours being confused (the Scipios are the worst), and I can only assume my advisor has as well. He’s absolutely brilliant and knows everything about Rome - and has tons of very detailed, readily available family trees with nomenclature on them that he wrote out. It’s difficult stuff.
You’ve got this a little bit off. First off, the cognomen usually was not a nickname. While in the very early days of the Republic this might have been true, in general the cognomen became a way of delineating various subbranches of greater family. A fourth name, the ‘agnomen’ was the more usual name added on in a man’s lifetime, Pompey’s substitution of Magnus for his cognomen was unusual at the time he did it.
Scipio the Great’s name is a better example of naming conventions. his full name was Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Major, although he was born Publius Cornelius Scipio, which was the same name as his father.
The name Publius was his praenomen, and has been said a few times in this thread, correlates roughly to a modern day first name, although was not frequently used outside of family situations.
Cornelius, which would have been what he generally would have been called in his early public life, was his nomen. The Cornelii were a large family, with many smaller branches.
The branch of the Cornelii that PCSA belonged to was the Scipio branch. Scipio, the cognomen, had separated from the main Cornelii branch a few hundred years before our man’s lifetime.
Scipio added the name Africanus as an agnomen after his defeat of the Carthaginians. The name was about halfway between a nickname and an honorary title. The Major would be considered an additional agnomen, but wouldn’t have bee nused in his lifetime. It served to differentiate him to historians from his adopted grandson who also was known as Scipio Africanus.
These naming conventions only apply to men. Roman women would only have a praenomen and a nomen. Their nomen would change at marriage from the feminine form of the father’s nomen to that of their husband’s.
Women’s names didn’t change upon marriage - thank heavens. I can’t imagine what the nomenclature would look like after all those divorces.
I’m curious…I’m rereading Colleen McCullough’s **Master of Rome **series in preparation for the final book, Antony and Cleopatra. What do you and your advisor think about her work and research?
As a comfort to all who are confused by the names of the top people and the imperial lineage, I would just like to say that the editors of the Cambridge Ancient history, the most important general reference work on the ancient world in English, were also confused. They were confused enough that they initially published their second edition with an incorrect family tree, and had to paste in the correct one!
So there. Confusion is the normal state on this issue.
What did a Roman matron call if she was annoyed at her daughters?
I haven’t asked him, but I think they do a great job of making up stuff between the lines of what we do know, which she maps out very well.
Daphne, what? (Can’t wait to hear the punchline)
Smith.
Jones.
Brown.
Happens everywhere/everywhen.
<shrugs>
That should be a joke, shouldn’t it…
[warning: not true - probably] Well, in the J-C era, she’d call her Julia, and if she wasn’t named Julia, she’d def. get the point!