Every culture has a different way of assigning people names.

Sometimes they use different words as names.

Sometimes they're in a different order, and sometimes they have a completely different system altogether.

One of the most complicated naming systems in history had to be that used by the ancient Romans.

They had a very elaborate system for naming people, with different rules for men and women,

and even special rules if you were adopted.

Learn more about Roman naming conventions on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Book your ticket to happiness with Sun Express Airlines. The Genesis of this episode came from a time when I was explaining how Icelandic naming conventions work to one of my friends

There are different systems for how people are named all over the world and that's going to be the subject of a future episode

sooner probably rather than later.

As I began doing research, I wanted to talk about the history of how people were named, and I

realized that explaining how the Roman naming system worked was going to take up most of the episode.

So I figured I'd just do a separate show on it.

The essence of the Roman naming system was known as the Tria Nomena, or the three names.

You might be thinking that if there are three names it must be like the modern

Western naming system where people have three names. You have a first name, a middle name, and a last name.

However, that's not quite the case. The three parts of the Tria Nomena were the Prenomen, the Nomen, and the Kogn,

I'm going to start by explaining the system for men, which was different than the system used for women.

Just so you have a point of reference,

I'll use as an example a name that you might be familiar with.

Gaius Julius Caesar.

The Prainoman was the first name.

So in this example, the Pray-Noman used by Caesar was Gaius.

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