gentilician

English

Etymology

From Latin gentīlicius +‎ -an.

Adjective

gentilician (comparative more gentilician, superlative most gentilician)

1. Synonym of gentilicial
   • 1837, Travers Twiss, “Domestic History from the Caudine Peace Down to the Third Samnite War”, in An Epitome of Niebuhr’s History of Rome, with Chronological Tables and an Appendix, part II, Oxford: D. A. Talboys, page 120:

     There is no doubt that the Potitii worshipped Hercules according to Greek rites, as the Nautii did Minerva. These rites, however, had nothing of a national character about them, they were purely gentilician.

   • 1908, Emil Reich, General History of Western Nations from 5000 B.C. to 1900 A.D., page 453:

     Once it had become inevitable to proceed on the lines of practically music States, that is, of States built on high-strung individuals, and not on organisations such as a tribe, a clan, a gens, a nation; nor on the basis of an indefinite hunger for more land; once this, the central and most essential trait of the Greeks, had become evident as well as imperative, the Greeks, while not entirely undoing the archaic remains of gentilician institutions, yet so reduced and impoverished them as to make them practically unimportant.

   • 1993, Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, page 80:

     In this instance, however, the prenominal abbreviation as well as the gentilician name is given; the House of the Treasure is also the House of Quintus Fulvius.

   • 1995, Mario Torelli, translated by Helena Fracchia and Maurizio Gualtieri, Studies in the Romanization of Italy, The University of Alberta Press, →ISBN, pages 52–53:

     Volsinii offers both Etruscan and Latin names in almost equal measure: this early Etrsucan mix with the Latin element may be an influence from the neighboring areas (cfr. Pompeii, perhaps from Interamna Nahars), Rusellae (Vicirii) demonstrates very well the effects of the Augustan colony, while at Caere the gentilician names certainly attributable to the city (the Egnatii and Sanquinii are uncertain attributions) provide a picture of conspicuous local solidarity.

   • 2007, Joan Breton Connelly, Portrait of a Priestess: Women and Ritual in Ancient Greece, Princeton University Press, →ISBN, pages 48 and 63:

     Sara Aleshire saw allotment from a preexisting short list as the primary means of filling gentilician priesthoods at Athens from the fifth century to the last quarter of the first century b.c. […] The old, inherited, lifelong priesthoods, associated with the gentilician class, were typified by the priesthood of Athena Polias as held by Lysimache.

   • 2015, Alain Duplouy, “Genealogical and dynastic behaviour in archaic and classical Greece: two gentilician strategies”, in Nick Fisher, Hans van Wees, editors, ‘Aristocracy’ in Antiquity: Redefining Greek and Roman Elites, The Classical Press of Wales, →ISBN, part I (Elites in the Ancient Mediterranean: Approaches and Models), page 59:

     It is a widely accepted idea that archaic Greek elites consisted of ‘aristocrats’ who ruled by hereditary right and enjoyed a life of leisure thanks to their riches. It is said that in the archaic age only these ‘aristocrats’ possessed full citizenship-rights, allowing them to rule their cities. Their leading position was jealously guarded by means of a gentilician social structure, until the lower social ranks, the dēmos, challenged their right to control every political office and the whole process of decision-making.

   • 2020, Fred K. Drogula, “The institutionalization of warfare in early Rome”, in Jeremy Armstrong, Michael P. Fronda, editors, Romans at War: Soldiers, Citizens, and Society in the Roman Republic (Routledge Monographs in Classical Studies), Routledge:

     This change meant the gentes needed larger armies that drew on the urban population, which would have enabled the comitia curiata to assert that their sanction and the conferral of imperium was necessary to authorize the leader of a gentilician army to recruit large numbers of soldiers from the city.

Noun

gentilician (plural gentilicians)

1. Synonym of gentilicial
   • 1996, Margaret E. Molloy, Libanius and the Dancers, Hildesheim, Zürich, New York: Olms-Weidmann, →ISBN, page 309:

     The order of entries is alphabetical with performance names, where evident, taking precedence over gentilicians.

   • 2005, Epigraphica Anatolica, page 80:

     Their first son was ostentatiously polyonymous: T. Flavius Carminius Athenagoras Claudianus, twin gentilicians and cognomina deriving from father and maternal grandfather – or perhaps we should say, maternal uncle.

   • 2011, Peter Thonemann, “The nature of Roman Apamea”, in The Maeander Valley: A Historical Geography from Antiquity to Byzantium, Cambridge University Press, page 99:

     C. Masonius Rufus (RPC i 3129–30), M. Manneius (3131–2); the relatively unusual gentilicians render it all but certain that they are Italians.

   • 2021, Elizabeth C. Robinson, Urban Transformation in Ancient Molise: The Integration of Larinum into the Roman State, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, pages 152–153:

     As has already been noted, the inscriptions may mix cognomina and nomina: Didia Decuma’s name is written out on the Larinum inscription, but the women on the Histonium inscription seem to be represented using only their gentilicians, while the men on both inscriptions are represented with their cognomina. It is difficult to tell whether the formula of using gentilicians for female family members has been preserved for the Larinum inscription.