# Last known individual bearing a three-part Roman name? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 12, 2007, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-known-individual-bearing-a-three-part-roman-name/395549 "2007-03-12T02:40:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2007, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-known-individual-bearing-a-three-part-roman-name/395549/1 "2007-03-12T02:40:40Z")
As we all know, during the Roman Republic and Empire, members of the upper classes usually had a three part name consisting of a given name, a clan-name, and the name of a family within the clan, like Gaius Julius Caesar. This usage seems to have outlasted the fall of the last official Emperor of the West, for we have Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius living from 480 to 525, not to mention Justinian the Great, whose full name was Flavius Petrus Sabbatius Justinianus So when exactly did this practice die out, or is it impossible to distinguish its last “natural” usage from conscious imitation a few centuries later? ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2007, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-known-individual-bearing-a-three-part-roman-name/395549/2 "2007-03-12T05:05:30Z")
[Heraclius](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heraclius) a.k.a. Flavius Heraclius Augustus (575-641; r. 610-641) was the last Roman emperor with one of those Latin names, and (perhaps not coincidentally) was the one who switched the official language of the empire from Latin to Greek, “thus strengthening the process of Hellenization in what was to become known as the Byzantine Empire, which had a distinctively Greek culture. For this reason, some historians tend to start the ‘Byzantine’ Empire with the reign of Heraclius, defining the period before him as ‘Late Roman’.” Do I win the thread? ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2007, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-known-individual-bearing-a-three-part-roman-name/395549/3 "2007-03-12T14:33:39Z")
Saying “Do I win the thread?” may come across a bit arrogant, I apologize. I was just feeling suddenly stoked to find out something new. The question is an interesting one, but I don’t recall it ever being asked before. Latin continued in use in the Eastern Roman Empire after the Western part fell but was replaced by Greek, naturally. The latest evidence I could find for Latin being spoken by any population within Byzantium’s realm was dated 586. If you google “Byzantine Latin” you get a lot of history of foreign relations, but nothing on the language. So I googled “Latin in the Byzantine Empire” and got exactly [one hit](http://www.farsarotul.org/nl21_2.htm)… > [@](#): > > In the year 586 AD the famous ‘torna torna’ episode seems to point to Latin speakers in the Byzantine army. The Vlachs then disappear from history for nearly four hundred years. > > There is an obvious reason for this disappearance. Byzantium lost control of most of the Balkan peninsula, and Byzantine historians were not interested in events in that area, concentrating instead on the capital and Asia Minor. With the loss of their Latin speaking possessions, knowledge of Latin in the Byzantine Empire vanished, and it is doubtful whether Latin or Vlach would have been recognized if it had been spoken. On the somewhat dubious evidence of the sixth century writer Johannes Lydus, Greek historians like to think that there remained people in the Empire who were able to speak both Latin and Greek and thus administer the law as magistrates, but the first mentions of Vlachs suggest that they tended to be outside the Empire and outside the law. Then I searched the phrase “Latin in the Eastern Roman” and got one of those JSTOR hits where you have to pay to read some long-ago academician’s output. From the Google hit snippet I luckily found a cite. > [@](#): > > On the status of Latin in the Eastern Roman Empire one may consult the important work of H. Zilliacus, Zum Kampf der Weltsprachen im ostrdmischen Reich … If my self-taught German is any help, that title means “On the fight of the world languages in the Eastern Roman Empire” (reading ostr **ö** mischen). ---
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2007, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-known-individual-bearing-a-three-part-roman-name/395549/4 "2007-03-12T14:53:21Z")
[QUOTE=Johanna] Saying “Do I win the thread?” may come across a bit arrogant. . . [/QUOTE] Not at all! 🙂 And anyway, you’re the only player. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Helen\_s\_Eidolon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Helen\_s\_Eidolon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Helen_s_Eidolon)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2007, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-known-individual-bearing-a-three-part-roman-name/395549/5 "2007-03-12T14:53:35Z")
But sometimes, even in the republic, names could inch up to four, especially if there were adoptions involved. So, I’m not entirely sure what you’re looking for. What might be more interesting would be to see when they dropped the traditional _praenomen_: C. (Gaius), Cn. (Gnaeus), M. (Marcus) etc. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2007, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-known-individual-bearing-a-three-part-roman-name/395549/6 "2007-03-12T16:18:13Z")
I was thinking more along the lines of some minor aristocrat somewhere in the Romance-speaking West, where the Latin names would have evolved somewhat naturally into Romance counterparts. For that matter, do any family names in the Romance countries today have any connection with those of the Roman era, or did virtually everyone in early medieval society come to a “primitive” stage where only first names were used, and family names had to re-evolve from scratch? ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2007, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-known-individual-bearing-a-three-part-roman-name/395549/7 "2007-03-12T16:25:57Z")
[QUOTE=Helen’s Eidolon] But sometimes, even in the republic, names could inch up to four, especially if there were adoptions involved. So, I’m not entirely sure what you’re looking for. What might be more interesting would be to see when they dropped the traditional _praenomen_: C. (Gaius), Cn. (Gnaeus), M. (Marcus) etc. [/QUOTE] But still the vanilla standard issue aristocratic name, absent adoptions and the like, was the one in three parts, and that’s what I’m interested in here. ---
**Author:** ![Helen\_s\_Eidolon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Helen\_s\_Eidolon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Helen_s_Eidolon)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2007, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-known-individual-bearing-a-three-part-roman-name/395549/8 "2007-03-12T16:37:15Z")
I guess I’m still a little confused by your question, then. Do you count the people listed in the OP as having traditional Roman names? Because they’re already pretty far off from the Republican/early Imperial standard. ---
**Author:** ![Helen\_s\_Eidolon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Helen\_s\_Eidolon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Helen_s_Eidolon)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2007, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-known-individual-bearing-a-three-part-roman-name/395549/9 "2007-03-12T16:40:38Z")
Relatedly, I think we can still see a lot of Roman names in modern times: Maria, Livia, Julia, etc. were all normal Roman women’s names. I also strongly suspect we can see some relations between last names, too, although I’ve never looked into it seriously. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2007, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-known-individual-bearing-a-three-part-roman-name/395549/10 "2007-03-12T16:43:45Z")
but did names like Julia survive as common names in the West through the Dark Ages and Middle Ages, or did they re-appear as part of the Renaissance? ---
**Author:** ![Helen\_s\_Eidolon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Helen\_s\_Eidolon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Helen_s_Eidolon)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2007, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-known-individual-bearing-a-three-part-roman-name/395549/11 "2007-03-12T16:55:55Z")
Here’s some general information from the Oxford Classical Dictionary: > [@](#): > > From the early imperial age, the nomenclature of the Roman citizen began to undergo radical changes, as a result of the adoption of an individual cognomen by ordinary citizens, and of the sharing of the same praenomen by the sons of new citizens and freedmen. As the first step praenomina began to disappear, having lost their identifying function (their total number was small, and in old Roman families only a few were in use); instead the cognomen took on the role of principal individual name. Later, gentile names also began to lose their identifying function as a result of the wide diffusion of the imperial nomina, especially after 212, when all provincial peregrini (i.e. non-Romans) became citizens and Aurelii (see CONSTITUTION, ANTONINE). In the Christian period, the tendency to revert to a single name was gradually strengthened, and, by the end of antiquity, Roman nomenclature once more adopted, except amongst the aristocracy, the system of a single name. Hereditary family names were revived at the end of the first millennium in the populous towns of northern Italy, spreading from there all over Europe. The whole entry is pretty interesting, although mostly relevant for the earlier times (and indicates a much wider range of variation than just the _tria nomina_, even in Republican times. The book recommended for this portion of the entry is I. Kajanto, Onomastic Studies in the Early Christian Inscriptions of Rome and Carthage (1963). ---
**Author:** ![Mops](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mops/32/16494_2.png) [@Mops](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mops)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2007, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-known-individual-bearing-a-three-part-roman-name/395549/12 "2007-03-12T16:58:03Z")
There was a member of the German federal parliament called [Cajus Julius Caesar](http://www.bundestag.de/mdb/mdb15/bio/C/caesaca0.html) (official bio from the parliament’s site; member from 1998 to 2005 - lost his seat but survived). Caesar is his family name, though, not his cognomen. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2007, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-known-individual-bearing-a-three-part-roman-name/395549/13 "2007-03-12T17:42:28Z")
[QUOTE=tschild] (official bio from the parliament’s site; member from 1998 to 2005 - lost his seat but **survived)**.[my emphasis] [/QUOTE] Are defeated German parliamentarians normally at risk of losing their lives? 😕 :eek: 😕 ---
**Author:** ![Mops](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mops/32/16494_2.png) [@Mops](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mops)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2007, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-known-individual-bearing-a-three-part-roman-name/395549/14 "2007-03-12T19:02:28Z")
[QUOTE=Northern Piper] Are defeated German parliamentarians normally at risk of losing their lives? [/QUOTE] Not normally; the contrast was rather with his namesake. ---
**Author:** ![pravnik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8edcca/32.png) [@pravnik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pravnik)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2007, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-known-individual-bearing-a-three-part-roman-name/395549/15 "2007-03-12T19:03:31Z")
James Tiberius Kirk. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2007, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-known-individual-bearing-a-three-part-roman-name/395549/16 "2007-03-13T17:21:49Z")
[QUOTE=Northern Piper] but did names like Julia survive as common names in the West through the Dark Ages and Middle Ages, or did they re-appear as part of the Renaissance? [/QUOTE] I have to conclude that they survived all along. Native names, or foreign names that have become assimilated into the languange, such as Greek names in Latin, or, later, Biblical names, become nouns in the language. Like ordinary nouns, they lost their inflections in early medieval period, but the basic names persisted.