30357: Collesano reply re: 30330: (reply) Chamberlain: 30327: lfr13: Re: 30317: Names ending in 'ius' (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: David Collesano <dcc@pobox.com>

Prior to an edict of Francis I in 1539, Latin was the official
language of administration and court in France. Until then, many
authors, as elsewhere in Europe, still often adapted Latin noms de
plume.

A posturing 18th century European neo-classicism may have revived the
vogue for Latin names. One of the few uses a French classical
education afforded planters in Sendomeng was that it allowed them to
amuse themselves by giving names of famous Roman patrician families
(Metellus etc.)  to their slaves - harking back to the days when Roman
citizenship still meant something in barbarian Gaul.

Ancient Romans themselves are known to have given "foreign sounding...
names to their slaves sometimes, in mockery perhaps, they were the
high-sounding appellations of eastern potentates, such as Afer,
Eleutheros, Pharnaces." cf. "Slave Names"
http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/romannames1/Rome_Roman_Names.htm

To give just one example, the name Marius perdured for centuries after
Caesar's conquest of Gaul. In 269 CE, one Marius, a provincial of
humble origins, rose to be the second Gallic Emperor. His name seems
common enough today cf. Marius Petipa of Marseilles (b.1822) who is
the father of French classical ballet. Also Marcel Pagnol's play
'Marius' (made a movie in 1931) See also the movie 'Marius et
Jeannette'  (1997)

Anticlerical Frenchmen with a smattering of neo-classical education
may have made made increased use of such names after 1789 not only for
snob appeal but as a pre-christian substitute for Catholic saints'
names for their children. These would become patronymics in the
colonies. Names such as Antoine, Catherine, Margaret, Marc, Martin,
Nicholas. Victor and Paul are all, of course, Greco-Roman in origin as
well but they were associated with Catholic saints. That association
could be broken by retrieval of their latinized forms.

The snarky element arises post facto with what seems, in retrospect, a
pretentious application of classical nomenclature. An analogue would
be the thousands of dusty market towns in rural America which bear
names that once resounded throughout classical antiquity. One-horse
villes like Athens, GA; Sparta and Corinth, MS; Syracuse, Ithaca, Rome
and Utica, NY; Alexandria, VA etc. spring to mind. - all neo-classical
monuments to inflated expectations and unintentional irony. Every
American state contains scores of these places.

-- dcc
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David C. Collesano, Pompano Beach, FL.

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