[antir-heralds] Name Check: Lucia Magnus

[Ursula Whitcher]

>> You'll note that the Saint Gabriel report 2842 describes <Lucius> as a 
>> nomen, not as a praenomen.  I think that means that it had been 
>> adopted as a nomen sometime after the time of the Republic-- I'll ask 
>> the Academy to clarify.  (I wrote the letter, but I didn't do all of 
>> the research, and the Academy archives for the letter aren't available 
>> at the moment.)
>>
>> Ursula Georges.
> 
> I had noticed Lucius as a nomen in that article, which is why I was 
> rather hesitant. I wasn't sure if it had "changed places" so to speak, 
> or if the article made a minor goof.

I went through the Academy archives, but they weren't terribly 
enlightening (except to show that Talan Gwynek thought it was a nomen-- 
Talan's hard to beat for erudition, but I don't expect you to take his 
bare word).

The Vindolanda Tablets website actually has some examples where they 
think <Lucius> in Roman Britain was functioning as a cognomen.  You can 
look up tablets with <Lucius> in the list of names, here:

http://vindolanda.csad.ox.ac.uk/4DLink2/4DACTION/WebRequestBrowse?searchType=browse&searchField=person&submit=People

The notes for Tablet 184 are particularly interesting:

Lucius scutarius: the reading of the name as Lucius assumes a noticeable 
serif on the right-hand upright of u, of which we have an example in 
ii.27, Huep... There is no difficulty in treating Lucius as a cognomen, 
cf. 156.2 note. scutarius is attested as a cognomen (LC 320), but the 
occurrence of praenomen plus cognomen would not fit the pattern of names 
in this text and we prefer to take scutarius as indicating a craft; the 
word occurs in CEL 26.

They're taking the name as cognomen + descriptive byname, but it appears 
that nomen + cognomen (with <Lucius> as nomen) is also a possibility. 
(Alternatively, we could treat <Lucia Magna> as cognomen + descriptive 
byname!)

Ursula Georges.