PPS I know it's Wikipedia but the section on Roman naming conventions describes how the 'middle' name was the family/clan name and the third name was only used to distinguish between different people with the same name. So that's presumably why 'Firmicus' is used - it's what we would term his 'surname'. 'Maternus' would be more like a nickname.

That must be the answer then. In any case, it's good enough for me - why this struck me as so important this morning, is now beyond me (it's only a reference, it's more important that I have a good point that needs the reference). Thanks for that. It now makes sense to me too - so this thread culminates in a good answer and everyone understanding what we're talking about. We don't get many of those in half a day here!

so this thread culminates in a good answer and everyone understanding what we're talking about. We don't get many of those in half a day here!

Quick, lock the thread!

Once I'd read them, the naming conventions seemed vaguely familiar from my school Latin lessons.... all a haze.... if only I'd paid more attention then.

As for this thread, I learned something and I had fun and eventually I was useful rather than an eejit, and funnily enough I was just about to start reading the man in question's multi-book, which is probably why this caught my eye, so thanks for bringing it up!

Regards

H.

A few weeks ago I was working on a bio of Firmicus for my book and I realized that I had referred to him as Firmicus rather than Maternus consistently throughout it, and I wondered if I should go through and change it to Maternus. Somehow that didn't feel right though, or it sounded kind of awkward compared to what was clearly the prevailing convention. I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one who has stumbled across this rather peculiar little issue.

Perhaps for our purposes a simpler/clearer treatment than Wikipedia is here:

http://www.vroma.org/~bmcmanus/roman_names.html

Regards

H.

Perhaps Margherita could help to solve this doubt.
Margherita, are you on vacation?

Trojan

horarcek wrote:Perhaps Margherita could help to solve this doubt.
Margherita, are you on vacation?

Trojan

Margherita is doing her baggage to hear Deborah and Giuseppe Bezza in Perugia, the day after tomorrow

About Firmicus I don't know, in Italian we call him mostly Firmico.
Or rarer Firmico Materno, never Materno without Firmico, like in English.

margherita

Lucky Marguerita.

Unlucky yuzuru

But there is plenty of conferences around here about the "effects of quiron on synastry"

Darn Latins, they all married their cousins, and ended up with the same set of 2 dozen names, the whole lot of them. Loved this thread!