CLAS 21405 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Manumission, Interpunct, Roman Citizenship
11 Sep 2017
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Names were extremely important in the roman world: they were expressions of the person"s family and status. By the first century ad, by virtue of their citizenship, romans had a three-part name: the appearance of this name is a guarantee that the person with a three-part name was a. Roman citizen: example: publius calvius iustus, son of publius, publius is the man"s personal name, that is, his praenomen, calvius is his nomen, or family name, this name is most similar to a last name in english. Is the abbreviation for gnaeus: c. stands for gaius, c and g sounded very similar in latin. Indeed, some c"s eventually became g"s in the language. Gaius and gnaeus indeed are very old in latin and the pronunciations with the g are later. We do sometimes encounter caius and cnaeus (with a c) in ancient texts, but not anywhere near as often as gaius and gnaeus (with a g)
