Recovered: Roman Names
Just as the Great Khan has seen fit to extend the contest deadline, so have I seen fit to procrastinate further. I have taken a list of Roman names, and truncated and padded it until it makes a neat table.
Photo by Giovanni Dall'Orto, via Wikimedia Commons.
- Praenomen
- This is like the first name. There’s not so many of them, and I have the table set up to (very) roughly weigh them by frequency.
- Nomen
- This is a sort of family name. The female form can be made by replacing the “-us” ending with “-a.” To roll a d120, roll a d10 for the ones place and a d12 for the tens and hundreds places. Treat a “12” as leading zeros unless the d10 rolls a “0.”
- Cognomen
- This specifies which branch of the family one comes from. A d200 is rolled like a d120 except using a d20 in place of a d12.
A half-dozen samples:
- Publia Hortensia Rulla (F)
- Quinta Claudia Planca (F)
- Publia Sicinia Longa (F)
- Gnaea Acilia Dento (F)
- Titus Horatius Stolo (M)
- Marca Livia Barba (F)
Automated
Some nuance is lost in translation here. There is no weighting or context. But it’s certainly much easier to use.
This post was first shared on January 14, 2013, in the same post as Recollections of 3rd Edition. The automated component is original to this post, and as always, assembled with Spwack’s generator generator.