Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by ffgjgf1 747 days ago
Until well into the Imperial period women didn’t even technically have their own names. They based all called Julia, Claudia, Cornelia etc. which was just the female version of their father gens. If you had 3 sisters sisters you’d just be Claudia IV..

So basically it’s pretty easy to come up with an unlimited number of Roman women if you just know a few Roman family names. Of course for boys it was only marginally better since each family just reused 3-4 first names (and eventually just started using numbers instead of names as well..)