Roman Names

I've always wondered what my name would have been if I had been a Roman. I've already reconciled myself to just three names; not being famous or victorious, I wouldn't cash in on any of that cool agnomen business (but how cool is a name like Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Majoris? I mean really).

It turns out that Roman name generators abound on the Internet, so I took pot luck at one. What did I get?

Spurius Flaccus Maximian.

Cripes. I mean, I wasn't really holding my breath for Marcus Tullius Cicero or Gaius Julius Caesar or anything, but Spurius Flaccus? It sounds like a Latin rendering of Accidental Fart! How would that sound in the Senate? "I wish to yield the floor to my colleague, Accidental Gas."

Let's try it again. Aulus Opsius Quiriac. Nope. No sale; it sounds like "Oopsie, I dropped my quinine." Nothing doing. One more try. Decius Sabucius Receptus. No, I don't really like that either; it's too close to Sebaceous Receptacle, but at least Decius is cool.

The problem is that the random name generator is just that: it's too random. In Roman naming, the first name, or praenomen, was sort of like a given name - Gaius, Marcus, Gnaeus, and there weren't many of them. The middle name, or just plain nomen, was the name of your clan, tribe or family unit - Julius, Claudius. There were a lot of them, but not all that many proper aristocratic ones. The last name, the cognomen, was a nickname, which was necessary because the first two names were hereditary and tended to repeat. The third name, the cognomen, was supposed to be based on some personal trait or characteristic of the person. Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, for example: Marcus was his given name, Vipsanius his clan, but Agrippa, that was all his - he had been born breech, and that's what Agrippa meant. How about a cognomen like Ahenobarbus, meaning "Bronze-bearded"? Or Cicero, meaning - for some reason - "chickpea"? Or the dreaded Posthumus, which meant that your father had died before you were born?

So what would I pick as my own cognomen? Bibulus, meaning "drunkard"? Flavus, for "blonde-haired"? Pulcher, meaning "attractive"? Or Celsus, for "tall"?

Gaius Marius Celsus*. That has a ring, don't you think? Though there are times when Titus Flavius Flavus makes me chuckle - if I were Flavius Flavus, would I have to wear a sundial on a chain around my neck? Yo!

* The real Gaius Marius, who was defeated by Cornelius Sulla in the civil war before the Civil War, had no cognomen, and I don't feel the least bit guilty usurping his name.