Template talk:Praenomina

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Copied from User talk:QuartierLatin1968: Please stop adding this template to all articles about individual praenomina, and deleting the "see also" link back to the main Praenomen article. These articles were carefully written and organized as a group, and have been carefully maintained since that time. Substantial revisions to the entire class should not have been undertaken without any discussion. I also feel that the trichotomy of "common," "less common," and "obscure" misstates the actual relationship of the various praenomina to one another across time and place, with the risk of misleading the reader, and that abbreviations should not be mixed with unabbreviated praenomina. I am willing to discuss a revised version of this template, but think it should be substantially modified before being applied to the entire class of articles. P Aculeius (talk) 06:33, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Well, that "trichotomy" is largely distilled from the information in the articles in question. I readily admit that the classification is artificial, and if it seems misleading to you, we can just as easily place all the praenomina in one list.

The template has a link to the main Praenomen article front and centre, so it seems superfluous to also have a "See also" section. Having a navigational template, however, has an additional advantage in that it gives readers the chance to jump around from one praenomen to the next. When I was reading this series, I found myself wishing I had this functionality. I found myself thinking, "I've already read the praenomen page, I've read about Volesus, now I want to read about Opiter, so why do I need to go back to praenomen for the link?"

Personally, I think there is an advantage in making the abbreviations highly visible, because they're the form that you actually encounter on inscriptions and MSS (with rare exceptions). A beginning classics student will want to see a list of abbreviations to help "decode" what T. means and what Ti. means, for example. Abbreviations also save space. Some of the more rare praenomina, however, have no abbreviations, so we have to write them out in full.

On the other hand, we could do something like Tiberius (Ti.) for all the praenomina that have abbreviations. This is the most letter-heavy option of all, and of least use for someone encountering a(n abbreviated) praenomen for the first time, which is why I don't prefer it.

Those are my thoughts, anyway. Q·L·1968 ☿ 07:05, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

I agree that with the inclusion of this template we can probably dispense with the "see also" section. I only discovered it after starting to "repair" the lost cross-references. However, I think that the bottom line, which links back to the articles "Roman Naming Conventions," "Gens," "Cognomen" and "Agnomen" should add "Praenomen" before "Gens" since people will look for it in the list, and possibly assume in error that there isn't such an article if it isn't in the list (yes, I realize it's linked elsewhere in the template, and at the beginning of each article, but if there's going to be a comprehensive list of closely-related articles at the bottom, then the main article on the subject probably needs to be included in that list). I might also include the article, "List of Roman Gentes," perhaps at the end, since it's not about names, but is essentially a list of one type (admittedly incomplete, but I'll be working on this).

The trichotomy is necessarily artificial, which is why despite my description in the article "Praenomen" I listed them all in alphabetical order without attempting to distinguish which were the most and least common. After all, this varied from time to time, and we don't actually have enough material to do a true statistical analysis. I know, I catalogued all the individuals I could identify in PW a number of years ago, and the number with praenomina was around 10,000, covering a period of around 900 years (with a few before and after that). The greatest variety was certainly at the beginning of the Republic, but the greatest number at the end of the Republic and beginning of the Empire. Between these periods the names represented far more patricians then plebeians, powerful families much more than minor ones (even within the larger gentes), and hardly anyone who didn't live at Rome.

But since the usage of praenomina differed from one family to the next, and was universal throughout peninsular Italy (except amongst the Greeks), we don't have anything close to a representative sample at any period of time. We have very rough approximations of the habits of the rich and powerful. So a lot of praenomina we think of as being very rare might have been much more common amongst the lower classes or outside of Rome. Sadly we don't have anything like a general directory of thousands of individuals of all different classes to consult. For the poor, unimportant, or rural we usually have nothing, not even an inscription. But a lot of uncommon names are found in rural inscriptions or in the names of obscure families, suggesting that that's where they got the most use. To restate the problem, at times a large gens might include hundreds of individuals living at the same time, of whom we may know the names of half a dozen to a dozen of the most influential members. So the overwhelming bulk of the populace is uncounted, even at the highest social echelons, of which we have the most representative sample.

*Pauses for breath* So, what's the solution? Lump them all together, and hope the list isn't too long? Or divide the list into different groups? One thing I don't want to do is use abbreviations in place of the names in the template. Possibly one could provide an alternative line in the template. I could work on this in my sandbox and provide some alternative versions. P Aculeius (talk) 15:08, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

I've just made a revised version and I'm pretty happy with how it looks, so I don't think I need to make another unless you don't care for it. In this version, I listed only two tiers of names: "common," meaning the names most likely to be encountered during the middle to later Republic and early Empire (and corresponding roughly to the published lists found in most books about Roman culture that I consulted back in the 1990's), and "uncommon or archaic," without any hair-splitting over which was which (an exercise in futility, if you ask me). Both seem to fit on one line at normal window widths for me, but extend to only two lines if I squeeze the window and so aren't too bad in my opinion.

The third line I've used for abbreviations, in case the user prefers to navigate by these instead. I've included two alternates for Manius (modern and the less-familiar ancient character; however, the five-stroke M used here isn't the one I've seen in authentic Roman inscriptions; that looks like a cross between an M and a W (i.e. a diagonally-stroked M with the last stroke of the W added. Could you find or provide something more like that we could use?). I've also done the same for Spurius, since the simple S. is the original abbreviation and Sp. a later version. I've included the abbreviations for several uncommon or archaic names that were abbreviated, at least sometimes, although limiting these to one version each, like most of the other names. I didn't consider it likely anyone would need App. for Appius, given that Ap. was included, or Av. for Aulus, which was usually just A. in both ancient and modern literature, and there seemed no reason to distinguish between Pos. and Post. (my preference would be for the three-letter abbreviation, but I've seen the four-letter version more often).

With the abbreviations, I decided to keep them in the same order as the names they stood for, instead of re-ordering them by alphabetical order of abbreviation. I don't think it'll create too much confusion, since people who choose to navigate by abbreviation are probably familiar with the convention to begin with, and are heading straight for the article with the associated name anyway. I also think it has a pleasingly Roman look to it as a result, although it might still have if it were strictly alphabetized.

Would like your opinions on this revision, posted below with the original for comparison. P Aculeius (talk) 15:58, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Oh, would like to suggest removing the link to Roman naming conventions for females because that article more or less completely ignores the basic subject of praenomina, while feminine praenomina are extensively discussed (although I need to revise that section) in Praenomen. The inclusion of this article could lead readers to conclude that there weren't feminine praenomina or that they aren't included in the other articles. Since this navbox is focused primarily on the praenomen, I think it would be better to avoid a link that would tend to direct readers away from the article that actually treats feminine praenomina and towards one that implies there weren't any. P Aculeius (talk) 16:02, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Salve, Publi. I like the looks of most of what you're suggesting here. Having separate lists—abbreviations and names in full—makes great sense, as does separating out variant abbreviations. In the revised version below, I'm just going to put the abbreviations into alphabetical order.

The page on Roman naming conventions for females might at least link to the area of praenomen that deals with female praenomina, with a {{See also}} template for example. You would know better than I where such a link might best be placed.

I'm also suggesting putting List of Roman gentes in parentheses; saving space is a high priority in navboxes. Please revert me if you think that goes too far.

As for the shape you're talking about for 𐌌, it's likely to be a font issue. On my computer, I have several fonts installed that have Old Italic support; some are sinistroverse and others are dextroverse. The glyph I'm seeing now has a vertical stroke extending to the baseline (the rest are diagonal and do not extend below midway); that vertical stroke is on the left. Which do you see on inscriptions for Manius, and which do you see for 𐌌 on your computer? In any case, we can work around it with a SVG, as I've shown below (not an ideal work-around, but maybe the best option?).

Oh, I had another thought about the abbreviations as well. As they're separated by raised dots anyway, do we need periods?

I appreciate the thoughtful input. Q·L·1968 ☿ 06:56, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

I think I can agree with putting the abbreviations in alphabetical order. The effect is fine, not jarring, even if it does mean that the names they represent are out of order. I was actually reconsidering when I reversed Tiberius and Titus. For some reason I always list Titus first, as though Tiberius were a variation of it that must come after; seems to be subconscious.

I'm going to have to give some thought to revising the section on women's praenomina to make it more accurately reflect Kajava's writing. Right now it fairly reflects the variety of praenomina she described, but not the process by which the usage of feminine praenomina declined or how they were used in later times. But overall, the main article on praenomina is still the principal source of information for feminine praenomina, and the other article is not a good source at all, because it treats only those women who had none and ignores the rest as if they didn't exist. So I'm going to replace it in the navbox with a section redirect for the time being.

I do think that the list of Roman gentes should stay written in full for the time being, or be abbreviated to "list of gentes," since in fact I'm not distinguishing between Roman and non-Roman gentes (which make up only a small fraction of gentes known well enough for even a stub article anyway). I'll do "list of gentes" to save space, as you suggested, although I don't think space is at such a premium right now given the width of the navbox and the number of links.

As for the abbreviation for Manius, at most we should have two total entries. However, none of the signs provided actually shows how Manius was abbreviated in inscriptions. They seem to show an archaic form of the letter M, which is certainly how it's usually described, but it's not one found in Roman inscriptions. If you look at this picture: http://www.moneymuseum.com/imgs/xcoins/image/2009/7/I_R_96769_2.jpg , you'll see that the letter was actually written just like a ligature of M and N (with all the vertical strokes slanted diagonally, which early Latin inscriptions often did with both letters). So, as I tried to describe a ligature of M and W earlier, although I now see that it might actually be a ligature of M and N, as I saw it described this morning (and frankly, this makes more sense than holding on to an archaic Etruscan letter). So it needs to be drawn like a W that begins with an upward stroke like an M (only diagonal, not vertical). I should be able to make one if need be, but I doubt I can make one appear in the abbreviation list. However, I don't believe that the letter presently being used was actually used for Manius, so if we can't replace it, we might need to remove that and rely on the traditional M'.

I understand your concern about the interpuncts, but I don't think having both periods and interpuncts is that confusing. Removing the periods would be, since they're standard in pretty much all modern literature. So while the interpuncts give the list a nice Roman feel, and probably need to stay, so do the periods. I don't think it'll cause any problems. P Aculeius (talk) 14:01, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

I wonder if the proper Manius symbol has been entered into Unicode. Perhaps I'll make inquiries. We could of course draw our own SVG.

Otherwise, I have no problem with the revised template below. I've taken the liberty of moving it into the template space (with just a couple tweaks of capitalization and italics). We can always fiddle with things after they've gone live. Q·L·1968 ☿ 03:04, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

I doubt it has. The one used to illustrate Manius is wrong, so I've removed it. We should replace it in the navbox if we can, and if we can't replace it, just go with M'. without an alternate. I've removed the section heading "Revision" from the template; it was showing up in the articles. Meanwhile, I applied the template to all the remaining praenomina and eliminated the "see also" sections. Thanks for setting it up! P Aculeius (talk) 04:56, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Not at all! Thanks for your co-operation and improvements! Q·L·1968 ☿ 05:01, 19 January 2013 (UTC)