Guru And Other Things

Yawn.

I'm relaxing here in the dark of my study, such as it is, listening to something I downloaded by someone/thing named Mocean Worker titled Chick a Boom Boom Boom from his/its Enter The Mowo! album.

Okay, crazy titles but very cool jazz breaks.

Anyone remember Guru?  Loved his combination of rap/Hip-Hop and Jazz.  Also very cool.

Here's some poetry, to ease the bitters:

The Lawyer's Invocation To Spring

Whereas, on certain boughs and sprays
Now divers birds are heard to sing,
And sundry flowers their heads upraise,
Hail to the coming on of Spring!

The songs of those said birds arouse
The memory of our youthful hours,
As green as those said sprays and boughs,
As fresh and sweet as those said flowers.

The birds aforesaid — happy pairs —
Love, 'mid the aforesaid boughs, inshrines
In freehold nests; themselves their heirs,
Administrators, and assigns.

O busiest term of Cupid's Court,
Where tender plaintiffs actions bring, —
Season of frolic and of sport,
Hail, as aforesaid, coming Spring!

By Henry Howard Brownell from A Treasury of Humorous Poetry.

Finally, a little history:

The Roman way of naming people was very different from ours.  Roman men from distinguished families always had three names, as in Marcius Porcius Cato or Gaius Julius Caesar or Marcus Tullius Cicero.  Just like us, there was a first name, called the praenomen ‘forename’, though with the difference that there were very few first names, no more than about twenty in all. It was possible to abbreviate most of them to one or two letters without misunderstanding. Marcus was shortened to M, Quintus to Q, and so on. The name Gaius is, strangely enough, abbreviated with the letter C, because this letter was once, when the alphabet was in its infancy, used both for the ‘k’ sound and for the ‘g’ sound. For the most part these first names did not have meanings as far as we know, but some of them are easy to interpret: Quintus means ‘the fifth’, Sextus ‘the sixth’ and Decimus ‘the tenth’. Families with many children evidently resorted to the numerals as a way of keeping tally!

The middle name, which ended in –ius, was called the nomen ‘name’ or sometimes nomen gentis ‘family name’. This represented the wider family or lineage to which one belonged and might be borne by a large number of people. Compare the Scottish use of clan names such as Campbell, McDonald, and Stewart. Finally, there  came the cognómen or surname, which indicated one’s immediate family, a much smaller group of people.

Roman men who did not belong to one of the leading families but who were nonetheless free citizens for the most part only had two names, a praenomen and a nomen, and no distinction was made between lineage and family. At the very bottom, of course, were the slaves, who only had one name. It was never a Roman first name, but was often a descriptive label such as Syrus ‘the Syrian’.

Women in Rome mostly had one name too, even if they belonged to a distinguished family. That name was often quite simply the name of the father’s lineage in the feminine.The daughter of Marcus Tullius Cicero was called Tullia. There were also other patterns. The daughter of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa was called Vipsania Agrippina, and her three daughters were called Agrippina, Livilla, and Drusilla. The first got her mother’s name and the next two were called after their famous great grandmother, Livia Drusilla, who had been married to Augustus.

Names then clearly showed a person’s position in society: the more names you had the higher up the social ladder you were. To have three was very good, but important people could have even more, as they were given different honorary names which recorded real or invented exploits. Most men, though, had to make do with two, and women and slaves had to put up with one. Sometimes people were given an extra name because of a change in status.We mentioned earlier that the young Gaius Octavius was adopted by Caesar in his will, something which to us rings very strange, but adoption was quite a common practice among Rome’s leading families. It was done partly to ensure suitable heirs for large fortunes and partly to strengthen ties between families. The person who was adopted would then get his new father’s nomen and cognomen. The young Gaius Octavius therefore became overnight Gaius Julius Caesar, taking the names of his dead adoptive father, but he added to these Octavianus, which shows that he previously belonged to the Octavius family. Finally, the Senate gave him the honorary name Augustus, and his complete name became Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus Augustus.

Slaves who were given their freedom also acquired new names. As free men they were allowed to have both a first name and a family name, and for the latter they usually took the name of their former owner. The very rich dictator Lucius Cornelius Sulla set a great number of his slaves free, with the consequence that there were suddenly thousands of people with the name Cornelius in Rome.

Which name people actually used in their everyday lives clearly varied. Famous people were generally referred to by their last name or cognomen. Marcus Tullius Cicero is known as Cicero, and Gaius Julius Caesar was usually called Caesar. But there are exceptions. The successor and stepson of Augustus was named Tiberius Claudius Nero but was always known as Tiberius, which is one of the few Roman first names. Later one of his nephews became emperor. His name was Tiberius Claudius Drusus, but he was always called Claudius. In principle one could be known by any one of the three names.

G'night.