Gaius Iulius Caesar (name) - Julius Caesar's Name

Julius Caesar's Name

The name Caesar probably originated from a dialect of Latium which did not share the rhotacism of the Roman dialect. (That is, the s between vowels did not change to r.) Using the Latin alphabet as it existed in the day of Julius Caesar (100 BC – 44 BC) (i.e., without lower case letters, "J", or "U"), Caesar's name is properly rendered (the spelling is also attested and is interchangeable with the more common ; however the letter was used with its antique pronunciation of, as it was an adaptation of Greek gamma). It is often seen abbreviated to . (The letterform is a ligature, which is often encountered in Latin inscriptions, where it was used to save space, and is nothing more than the letters "ae".) The leading vowels in each part of the name are long, and in Classical Latin, the whole name was pronounced, or, alternatively, with praenomen pronounced trisyllabically as . In Greek, during Caesar's time, his name was written Καίσαρ, which was pronounced more or less the same. The pronunciation of the first syllable is similar to that of the German word (Kaiser), itself an early loanword.

Roman nomenclature is somewhat different from the modern English form. Gaius, Iulius, and Caesar are Caesar's praenomen, nomen, and cognomen, respectively. In modern usage, his full name might be something like "Gaius Iulius-Caesar", where 'Caesar' denoted him as a member of the 'Caesarian' family branch of the 'Iulian' clan, and 'Gaius' was his personal name. Though contemporary writers sometimes referred to him as "Gaius Caesar," the name's historical usage was not the same as it is in the 21st century. His grand-nephew, Gaius Octavius, duly took the full name "Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus" upon his posthumous adoption in 44 BC, and the name became fused with the imperial dignity; in this sense it is preserved in the German and Bulgarian words Kaiser and Tsar (sometimes spelled Czar), both of which refer to an emperor. Compare the Hungarian, Slavic and Turkish words for "king", forms of kral, all adapted from Karl, the personal name of Charlemagne.

The name of the dictator Julius Caesar—Latin script: CAIVS IVLIVS CAESAR—was often extended by the official filiation Gai filius ("son of Gaius"), rendered as Gaius Iulius Gai filius Caesar. A longer version can also be found, however rarely: Gaius Iulius Gai(i) filius Gai(i) nepos Caesar ("Gaius Julius Caesar, son of Gaius, grandson of Gaius"). Caesar often spoke of himself only as Caius Caesar, omitting the nomen gentile Iulius. After his senatorial consecration as Divus Iulius in 42 BC, the dictator perpetuo bore the posthumous name Imperator Gaius Iulius Caesar Divus (, best translated as "Commander God Gaius Julius Caesar"), which is mostly given as his official historical name. Suetonius also speaks of the additional cognomen Pater Patriae, which would render Caesar's complete name as Imperator Gaius Iulius Caesar Pater Patriae Divus.