Octavius, Quintus (was Re: Barry Popik namecheck)

[Wilson Gray]

The ancient-Roman practice of naming some boys and all girls by
birth-order died with the Roman Empire. Otherwise, we'd expect
"Priscilla" to be only the nickname of someone's first-born daughter,
known formally as "Prima" and not an independent name in and of
itself, having no necessary connection with birth-order.

-Wilson

On Sun, Apr 6, 2008 at 9:45 PM, Mark Mandel <thnidu at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>  Poster:       Mark Mandel <thnidu at GMAIL.COM>
>  Subject:      Octavius, Quintus (was Re: Barry Popik namecheck)
>  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>  ISTR that these names lost their ordinal denotation and came to be
>  treated just as names. Cc to ANS-L.
>
>  ANS gang, can you give us some help over here at ADS-L?
>
>  On Sun, Apr 6, 2008 at 5:48 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
>  > But were these the 8th (or the 5th, in the case of Quintus) born, or
>  >  rather born in the 8th (or 5th) month of the year?
>  >
>  >  Joel
>  >
>  >
>  >  At 4/6/2008 03:53 PM, sagehen wrote:
>  >  >There are quite a few Octaviuses (Octavii?) & Octavias in my family tree.  I
>  >  >doubt if they were all eighth-born, though the IXX Cent families in which
>  >  >they appeared  did tend to have big broods.
>
>  --
>  Mark Mandel
>
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