Imperator: Rome

Imperator: Rome

Reanimāta - Beta 1.10
Lord of Liberty  [developer] 25 Mar, 2024 @ 4:35am
How to name Roman girls?
Because Invictus 1.7 changed the way Latin women get named I will explain why my mod won't adopt this...

My mod Reanimāta has a dynamic system to name a Roman girl/woman to represent the historical way the Romans used as far as we know.
To break it down the Romans were good at conquering the world but bad at naming their children even their boys... Let’s say your first name is Marcus and you hear a beautiful female voice calling "Marce, i basiaque me!" while visiting the market, you can ignore this offer because the chances are extremly low that you are adressed...there is always another Marcus...
But back to the girls.
The daughter of Cicero was called Tullia since her father and she belonged to the gens Tullia the Tullian tribe or greater family which provided this name (Nomen gentile). So, every girl from this big family was called Tullia and every boy Tullius in addition to the almost useless First Name (Praenomen): Marcus Tullius. Then the boys only had a third name to solve all these problems, right? No...also the additional name (Cognomen) was a family name and was passed to the sons. The only son of Marcus Tullius Cicero was Marcus Tullius Cicero.
This third name of the father though was used in the genitive form to indicate connection (not possession ;) ) to his daughter: Tullia Ciceronis (The Tullian Girl from one of the Tullian guys who also is called Cicero like his father or any other from this branch)
But what if Cicero had another daughter? Yeah, again: Tullia Ciceronis
There were also useless first names for the Roman girls but they were not used often in classical times or we just have no sources or seldom: Cicero called his daughter often Tulliola which just means 'small Tullia'. But technically this is a nickname in the modern sense and not a Praenomen.

So, what is the solution to all this mess?

Order & Comparison!

In the vanilla game every girl gets an ordinal: First, Second in latin: Prima, Secunda and so on, but Paradox messed with the Sixth - Sexta (called Septa in game) which appears only in the game if there are a lot of sisters of course.
But why ordering when there is only one girl? Why Tullia Prima if she is the only one? Exactly! Prima was never used in such case but in game every first daughter gets this name incorrectly. Just try to think about your first nose without having the question in your mind where or what a second nose could be...ok bad example...but you get the idea.
As soon as there is another sister, using order or comparison makes sense. So, they did. If there are two, then they are most likely different in age: one younger & one older in latin: Minor & Maior. If more, than one is the oldest – Maxima.
When a third was born, then they started to use order much more often. So Third – Tertia, Forth – Quarta were common, Second – Secunda was not. (By the way, 2nd in latin is very often 'altera' (the other) not 'secunda')
You see, the system in the vanilla game is not that great. To fix this, I added a slightly randomized system which checks the number of older daughters whenever a Roman baby sees the light of this world for the first time AND also renames the older sisters accordingly.

To end this long yada yada yada. Here an example for daughters of the Julian Family:
  • 1st Daughter -> new baby is just called Julia
  • 2nd is born -> Julia becomes Julia Maior and the new baby is called Julia Minor
  • 3rd is born -> Julia Maior becomes Julia Maxima and Julia Minor becomes Julia ‘Media’ (the middle one) or Julia Secunda and the new baby is called Julia Tertia and so on.

There are always variations like old latin forms or rare cases of Prima if she is not the only one, of course, but the system never names a new baby like one of her sisters used to be called earlier.
In addition to all that, I added some real nicknames a girl can get based on her stats at the age of 16 if she is an only child. For example: if she has a high zeal value, than she could get the nickname ‘Pia’ – the pious. All this works as well for the non-Roman but Latin Girls as well with (pseudo)-italic variations. Note that the Etruscans are not part of the Italic culture group in my mod so they are provided by names like all other non-Latin characters.

Invictus 1.7's solution of this vanilla problem is giving Roman women ordinals randomly sometimes twice which I think is problematic on its own: "Decima Valeria Secunda" and such examples are totally ahistorical and nonsensical: 'The tenth daughter of Valerius and the second'. To be fair, gameplay wise this is maybe better than Paradox version, but yada yada yada
Last edited by Lord of Liberty; 11 May @ 9:33am
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Showing 1-2 of 2 comments
Kevin McScrooge 15 Apr, 2024 @ 7:08pm 
Love the detailed breakdown, thanks for the work you do!
Gambler 17 Dec, 2024 @ 1:00pm 
Secundus?:D
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