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Roman naming conventions[1] technically did have a personal first name that came first and was called that: first name or forename is a reasonably direct transl
by cge 3y ago
Roman naming conventions[1] technically did have a personal first name that came first and was called that: first name or forename is a reasonably direct translation for praenomen. The complexity is that by the late republic praenomina were largely from such a small set of names that they were not particularly useful to distinguish anyone, and they became somewhat of a formality that would often be omitted.
Julius Caesar has the 'group/last' name first because it doesn't include his first name at all: including it he would be Gaius Julius Caesar. The cognomen (there Caesar), meanwhile, was a bit of an inconsistent mess that in various times and contexts could be personal, hereditary, honorific, given, adopted...
[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_naming_conventions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_naming_conventions
- thaumasiotes 3y agoHereditary cognomina were used to distinguish different major branches of large, powerful clans. Some sort of device to specify which subbranch of an enormous group you're talking about appears to be necessary in every place that has such enormous groups; in imperial China, then as now, vast swathes of the population were covered by just a handful of surnames, but the practice developed of referring to notable families by a combination of their name and the location where they were dominant. So Caesar's close relatives were all also called Caesar, which is how it got to be an imperial title. You might think that with the original cognomen locked into place for such families, members would get a second cognomen so that there would be at least one part of their name that could identify them. But apparently not.
- rsynnott 3y agoThey _sometimes_ did, I think. Here's one (non-Julian) example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quintus_Caecilius_Metellus_Numidicus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quintus_Caecilius_Metellus_Num...
- Tainnor 3y agoSome famous people got additional names, agnomina, such as "Africanus". And Roman emperors were later known for inflationary use of such designations. You could run a minor campaign on the Rhine and call yourself Germanicus for example. The whole part about the Roman naming system indicating heritage became even more complicated when Caracalla (properly named Marcus Aurelius Antoninus) made every free man in the Empire a Roman citizen and now basically everyone was called "Marcus Aurelius" without ever having had any ties to the Aurelii family.