Amongst my R.R. coins I have an inordinate number of 'moneyers' who start their names with an 'L'. I have coins of:- L. Antestius Gragulus, and L. Cornelius Sulla, and L. Manlius Torquatus, and L. Memmius, and L. Thorius Balbus, and (well, the list goes on). Surely they can't ALL be called 'Lucius', can they?
@> Bing, and Mikey, - Thank-you for that information. Well, bang goes my theory that it may have been a 'Title', like 'Mr.' or 'Moneyer'.
Romans used a very small list of praenomena. There are a few rare ones but most are seen with their standard abbreviation. For example T is always Titus but TI is always Tiberius. For a reason of archaic letters, we always say Gaius but abbreviate it C (not G). See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praenomen I might add that most families used only a few names. If your praenomen was not the same as your father's, you probably had a brother who was using that one and you had the one used by an uncle or grandfather. Lucius was extremely common as was Marcus, Gaius and Publius. I suspect those names account for over half of the free men of good families. Slaves could be named as you wish like we do dogs. On coins we see a few less common ones more often because they were the name of choice in a certain family. For example, Tiberius was used by the Claudii who provided several coin issuing personalities. Most, however will be C, M and L.
@> Doug As they say in the 'classics' "Well, I didn't know that." Thank-you. There is so much more to coin collecting than winning auctions.
Kinda like Charles, Edward & Henry => yah, 2000 years ago Lucius ("Lucky") must have been the cool go-to family name, eh? ... hmmm, apparently Lucius means "Light" (makes sense)
