People don't necessarily have names, not in the sense we would use it. The "name" of Imperator Augustus was Octavianus, which just meant: The Eighth, as he was the eighth child of his parents. In general, Romans didn't have names, they just acquired titles and nicknames during their life.
He was born Gaius Octavius. (He apparently got his cognomen of "Thurinus" somewhat after his birth.) He changed his name to include Octavianus, after his birth family, after Gaius Julius Caesar died and Caesar's will named Gaius his adopted son and heir. At each point, he had a name that was recognized as such, distinct from titles and nicknames.
If you're going to try to be pedantic, get at least the core details right.
Actually, Romans had some name, but it didn't really matter. And it gets even more complicated. There were 18 praenomens in use, as far as we know, but most of them went out of use, and only the three Caius, Lucius and Marcus remained, at least for males. As they didn't really help to distinguish people, they went mostly out of daily use, or were left abbreviated in inscriptions. If people were aristocracy, they also had the name of their gens. Thus Caius Iulius (Caesar) was of the gens of the Iulians. But
"People have names" is an empirically provable fact, not a false assumption.
Everybody that you can name probably does have a "name" in the sense that you use it.
But you are not the only person in the world, and the language which you speak is not the only language in the world. Whether you would recognise all the different forms of names in use as being "names" in your familiar sense is a different question.
Probably, within a peer group, individuals have some shorthand for identifying one other as distinct from "her over there". But outside that peer group, there's no reason to expect other groups to have the same (or even slightly similar rules. In particular, the assumptions that a programmer makes about a groups set of rules may bear no connection to the group's actual rules.
Which is the actual point that "Patrick McKenzie (better known as patio11 on the Internets.)" was making in this [kalzumeus.com]. Without one universally recognised authority to assign and de-duplicate names, programmers will have to be very careful about the assumptions they make concerning the representation of identities.
And there's the time issue too. As I realised when filling out a medical border-crossing form a couple of days ago. It asked for my passport number - which is a classical single-authority Unique Personal Identifier. Except... I have two passports, with different numbers (and may soon acquire a third, for a dual citizenship). So I have to be very careful to remember which passport number I enter into which company's forms.
This has never been more obligatory (Score:2, Funny)
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Anyone who says "people have names" is a wrong assumption can be safely dismissed as a crank.
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He was born Gaius Octavius. (He apparently got his cognomen of "Thurinus" somewhat after his birth.) He changed his name to include Octavianus, after his birth family, after Gaius Julius Caesar died and Caesar's will named Gaius his adopted son and heir. At each point, he had a name that was recognized as such, distinct from titles and nicknames.
If you're going to try to be pedantic, get at least the core details right.
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I was rebutting the claim about "people have names" being a false assumption, so it matters very much if Romans had names. I have a name, Donald John Trump has a name, Yoshihide Suga (more formally è... 義å) has a name. "People have names" is an empirically provable fact, not a false assumption.
And Octavius was Augustus Caesar's nomen at birth because he was a member of gens Octavia. It had absolutely nothing to do with his birth order.
Trying to translate Roman names the way you
Re:This has never been more obligatory (Score:2)
Everybody that you can name probably does have a "name" in the sense that you use it.
But you are not the only person in the world, and the language which you speak is not the only language in the world. Whether you would recognise all the different forms of names in use as being "names" in your familiar sense is a different question.
Probably, within a peer group, individuals have some shorthand for identifying one other as distinct from "her over there". But outside that peer group, there's no reason to expect other groups to have the same (or even slightly similar rules. In particular, the assumptions that a programmer makes about a groups set of rules may bear no connection to the group's actual rules.
Which is the actual point that "Patrick McKenzie (better known as patio11 on the Internets.)" was making in this [kalzumeus.com]. Without one universally recognised authority to assign and de-duplicate names, programmers will have to be very careful about the assumptions they make concerning the representation of identities.
And there's the time issue too. As I realised when filling out a medical border-crossing form a couple of days ago. It asked for my passport number - which is a classical single-authority Unique Personal Identifier. Except ... I have two passports, with different numbers (and may soon acquire a third, for a dual citizenship). So I have to be very careful to remember which passport number I enter into which company's forms.