I like names, but this is a very euro-centric. My ideal "let's talk about names" article would cover a lot more different societies and be a bit more universal in its outlook. There's a world of fun stuff with names in Arabic or Japanese, and how various states try to control what people name their kids.
(Saying this, I understand it's a bit shallow to react primarily to an article's title).
>Moreover, at birth human infants are unable to appropriate names for themselves, consequently, another older person must confer a birth name.
>the nomen, which was a hereditary name (or surname) identifying a person as a member of a distinct gens, i.e., family, tribe, or clan, which constituted an extended Roman family, all members of which shared the same nomen and claimed descent from a common ancestor.
Reading the article makes me really want someone to write a "Naming Systems Very Different from Ours" series of articles along the lines of the classic "Legal Systems Very Different from Ours" [ http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Legal%20Systems/LegalSystemsCo... ].
It was also not uncommon to reuse a name. if a child died that name might be given to the next baby born. It seems creepy but you can see it as the child being reborn and trying again.
(Saying this, I understand it's a bit shallow to react primarily to an article's title).
>Moreover, at birth human infants are unable to appropriate names for themselves, consequently, another older person must confer a birth name.
There are groups that don't name babies at or near birth (e.g. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/parents-in-a-remo... leave it for a year, and I can't find a citation but I think I recall some other groups pushing naming even further).
>the nomen, which was a hereditary name (or surname) identifying a person as a member of a distinct gens, i.e., family, tribe, or clan, which constituted an extended Roman family, all members of which shared the same nomen and claimed descent from a common ancestor.
As an aside, if a roman slave was freed, they (at least in some periods) took the praenomen and nomen of their former master. (cf https://latininscriptions.ashmus.ox.ac.uk/resources/resource... . this article also has some details: https://carolashby.com/roman-names/).
Reading the article makes me really want someone to write a "Naming Systems Very Different from Ours" series of articles along the lines of the classic "Legal Systems Very Different from Ours" [ http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Legal%20Systems/LegalSystemsCo... ].