Roman Name Generator

Roman Male Name

The Roman male name consisted of at least two parts: a personal name (praenomen) and a generic name (nomen); in addition, there could be an individual nickname or the name of a branch of the genus (cognomen).

• PRAENOMEN: personal name, given name; only parents, siblings, wife and very closest friends would use this name to the person’s face; females had no praenomina. Note the appearance of numbers: Quintus, Sextus, Decimus.
• NOMEN: the ‘clan’ name, the indispensible part of a person’s nomenclature.
• COGNOMEN: an ‘additional’ name, which distinguished branches of a clan from each other; the patrician Cornelii, for example, had at least eight cognomina. Many appear to be humorous, e.g. Cicero: ‘chickpea’/’garbanzo’; Naso: ‘the nose’; Caesar: ‘hairy’; Caecus: ‘blind’; Flaccus: ‘fatty’.
• AGNOMEN: a ‘supplementary’ name, to distinguish further between branches, or sometimes to celebrate military conquest, or sometimes to indicate an adoption (by making the birth-family name into an adjective to follow the adopted-family name).

Roman Female Name

Women did not have personal names, but were referred to by generic names. Since all the women in the same family had a single name, they differed in age within the family . For example, Iulia Maior (= senior), Iulia Secunda (=second), Iulia Tertia (=third), and so on until the youngest (Iulia Minor).
Noblewomen could also bear the cognomen of their father; for example, Sulla’s wife was the daughter of Lucius Caecilius Metellus Dalmaticus and was called Caecilia Metella, the wife of the Emperor Augustus was the daughter of Marcus Livius Drusus Claudian and was called Livia Drusilla.