Roman Soldier Name Generator

A Roman soldier's name tells you who he was and where he came from. A citizen legionary carried the tria nomina: a praenomen drawn from a pool of barely a dozen (Gaius, Lucius, Marcus, Quintus, Titus, Publius), a nomen marking his gens (Julius, Valerius, Aurelius, Flavius), and a cognomen that often started as a nickname. Many cognomina sound exactly like what a soldier's comrades would call him: Rufus (red), Longus (tall), Niger (dark), Celer (quick), Ferox (fierce), Scaeva (left-handed). In the ranks men went by their cognomen, so Caesar's famous rival centurions are remembered simply as Pullo and Vorenus.

Auxiliaries from Gaul, Thrace, Syria and the Rhine were not citizens, so they usually kept a native name (Dizzo, Bitus, Mucatra) and added the emperor's nomen when they earned citizenship at discharge. That is why tombstones from the frontier are full of Tiberius Claudius, Marcus Ulpius and Aurelius so-and-so: each one dates the man to the emperor who enrolled him. By the late Empire Flavius had become a near-universal military nomen, borne by generals from Stilicho to Belisarius.

The list mixes real soldiers from Caesar's commentaries, inscriptions and the imperial army lists with freshly assembled names that follow the same rules, from Republican consuls to fourth-century field commanders.