What's in a name?

[This probably falls into the category of “things only Jed finds interesting,” but I have never let that stop me from sharing something with you guys and I don’t intend to start now.]

Amar recently bought me a copy of Virgil’s Aeneid, and I have begun to read it. First of all, I want to say that this is a truly remarkable book. I might get into the Aeneid in a later post, but that is not the subject of this entry. I only mention it because reading Virgil is what led me down the line of inquiry which eventually led me to the topic of this post: Roman naming conventions.

I have always thought that the Roman’s had magnificent names. Even the most common Roman names have a regal air about them. Publius Vergilius Maro (whom we know as Virgil) was the son of a farmer. But what a kingly name he had! “Publius” carries with it powerful connotations of “public” service, or “popular” appeal. When I read it, I thought it sounded like an appropriate name for a great nationalist poet. I decided to look into how Roman names were given, and what can be understood from them. Turns out they can be very informative about their bearer.

The following is what I understand about the naming conventions for Roman males. I understand that females had different conventions. The core of the roman name is called the “tria nomina.” It consisted of three parts (as you might have guessed.)
1) the “praenomen,” which is the person’s given name, usually chosen by his father,
2) the “nomen” (which literally translates as “name” is in fact the name of the man’s clan, or “gens” in Latin and
3) the “cognomen,” which is the name of the family within the clan from which the man comes.

These were assembled thusly:
[praenomen] [nomen] [cognomen].

So, now we can make some sense of Virgil’s name. He is Publius, of the Maro family in the Vergilius clan. Interesting, right? But it gets better.

The most interesting thing about Roman naming conventions is the way they developed chronologically. [The best part of studying anything Classical, whether it be art, literature, history, or philosophy is how elemental it all seems to be. The world in which we live is so evolved, refined, rehashed and habitual. Everything we do, from the language we speak to the etiquette we subscribe to carries with it the weight of thousands of years of precedent. We are so far removed from the origin of things that we rarely know why we act the way we do. In ancient Rome, they still seemed to be cobbling it all together and figuring out what works. I think that is why studying it is so appealing. ] The development of Roman naming conventions is very typically Roman. It began rather utilitarian, but eventually developed into an arrogant, pompous and laughable excess.

So in the beginning, everyone only had one name, the nomen. Everyone was a diva, I guess. Rome was a nation of Bonos and Madonnas. Fathers named their sons after themselves, so all the males in a given family had exactly the same name. As Rome began to grow I guess this got confusing. They started adding the praenomen to distinguish between different members of the same family. It is important to note that the praenomen was not the person’s core name – it was merely a way to distinguish between brothers. Because of this, there were very few praenomens actually in use (less than 50, I think.)

Apparently Romans just couldn’t resist naming their kids after themselves. Eventually they began passing their praenomens along to their sons along with the family nomen. So once again there were housefuls of males with the same name. To distinguish between them, they began adding the cognomen, which was originally a nickname meant to express something about the character of the individual. These are the names which often have recognizable Latin roots like “Fidelus” (meaning “faithful”), “Tacitus” (meaning “quiet”) or “Tyranus” (meaning “Count Dookoo”). Of course, they eventually started passing on all three names to their sons, once again creating the same old problem.

So yet again they needed a way to distinguish between all these guys with the same name. They began adding a fourth name, called the “agnomen.” The agnomen was another nickname, usually given later in life and again meant to indicate something about the character or personality of its bearer. Sometimes they were given to commemorate heroic military service, as was the case with “Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus” (Germanicus means “victorious in Germany”). Of course, once you have earned a badass agnomen like that, you can’t resist passing it along to your sons. So more names were needed.

After this point it gets too complex to continue. There are names granted as political (and sometimes theological) titles. There are names which indicate the identity of the bearer’s father and grandfather. There are names which indication adoption. It goes on and on. The end product of all this was the production of names like the following, which was the full name of the son of the famous Roman philosopher and orator whom we know as Cicero.

MARCUS TULLIUS Marci Filius Marci Nepos Marci Pronepos Cornelia tribu CICERO,

Or, “Marcus Tullius Cicero, the son of Marcus, the grandson of Marcus, the great-grandson of Marcus, of the Cornelian voting tribe.

Two things I took away from this lengthy and mostly unnecessary inquiry.

The first is that we almost always refer to famous ancient Romans by their family name, rather than their given name. This was a surprise to me, because for some reason the names we refer to (Cicero, Virgil, Cato, etc.) all sounded like “first names” to me. I always assumed it was roughly equivalent to the way we refer to certain mega-celebrities by their first names only. Turns out the names we know them by are the equivalent of their “last name”, so it is more akin to the way we refer to Mozart or Shakespeare by their last name only.

The second is that for all their obvious excess, the one thing that can be said for these Roman names is that they meant something significant about the people who bore them. A name like the one above is a constant reminder to its bearer that he is part of a family, and that he carries the name borne by his father and grandfather. In America we tend to glamorize rebellion against our parents. We couldn’t be less concerned with the history of our family or the accomplishments of our grandparents. This lack of concern is manifested by the recent fashion of naming children ridiculous, made up, commercialized, or cutesy names. The goal seems to be to name the child something creative, rather than something significant. A name is just another fashion accessory.

Maybe this is some kind of expression of positive American independence and self-reliance. Maybe it is all very progressive and post-modern. Still, I can’t shake the feeling that we are losing something significant. What do y’all think?

As for me, I am thinking of naming my kid Jedidiah Addison Tyranus Crews.