Why Did Rich Renaissance People Have Latin Names?

We’re all familiar with the greats of antiquity and their Greco-Roman names. Your Maximuses and your Augustuses and countless others whose names litter our high school history texts with dates we can hardly remember.

During the 15th and 16th centuries, rich, fancy Renaissance Europeans used some strange naming conventions. Foregoing their family names, it was fashionable for more well-to-do individuals, especially among scholars, ranking clergymen, and scientists, to “Latinize” themselves.

One reason they did this was because famous or wealthier men had (and have) a higher likelihood of traveling and being known throughout the world. Moving throughout Europe with a complicated Polish name nobody can pronounce does not identify you as a worldly man, it identifies you as Polish during a time in which that may not be the message you want to send, Copernicus.

By Latinizing one’s name, a certain universality could be evoked during a time in which countries fought like wild dogs and it behooved one to seem a bit less partisan.

Furthermore, it is important to remember that at the time, Latin and Greek were languages understood and spoken to some degree by Europe’s educated elites. A scientist from Portugal and a financier from the Russian Empire might have had no other common language between them, but Latin was a much safer bet, and giving yourself a Latin may have made you seem less “foreign” and “other”.

There were a few ways that they’d do this. Some would translate the meanings of their names into their Latin equivalents. Some would simply modify their own names like 12 year-old-me naming a D&D character after myself. They often have chosen names that sounded similar to their birth names – such as Jan van Gorp ===> Johannes Goropius Becanus.

Sometimes they kind of made stuff up because they probably just liked the sound of it.

 

Some famous examples of others who Latinized their names are:

• Christiaan Huygens – Christianus Hugenius (Astronomer, physicist, inventor, studied the rings of Saturn).
• Johannes Kepler – Iohannes Keplerus (Astronomer, mathematician, famous for work on the planetary laws of motion)
• Antonio Stradivari – Antonius Stradivarius (Legendary violin maker)
• Johannes Müller von Königsburg  – Regiomantanus1Pretty epic change, but I guess when your name is as long as his, you might as well shorten it a bit. I wonder if he went by Reggie. (Contributed to Copernicus’ later theories of heliocentricity.) 2Copernicus also uses a Latinized name. His birth name was Mikołaj Kopernik.
• Abū al-Qāsim Khalaf ibn al-‘Abbās al-Zahrāwī al-Ansari – Abulcasis (pioneered modern survery)
• Gerrit Gerritzoon – Desiderius Erasmus (Priest, scholar, famous for helping modern European kids study abroad).
• Many, many, many, many more.

 

This practice continues today in other forms.

While most John Does do not name themselves Johnicus Dosimus, the trend can still be seen in scientific nomenclature, including anatomy and taxonomy.

Some of my favorite examples include things named after Barack Obama and Donald Trump. For instance, Obama has had numerous species named after him, including Obamadon gracilis, an extinct lizard, and Aptostichus barackobamai, a spider.

Trump has earned himself a small endangered moth, Neopalpa donaldtrumpi, named for its similar orange hairstyle.

 

 

The moral of the story is that if you were a rich, smart, successful man running around Europe between 1400 and 1700, changing your name to something that associated you with the revered great thinkers of the Classical era was super cool.

It evoked imagery of culture and prestige, gave credence to your scientific work, and frankly made your name easier to pronounce and write for all those laymen who couldn’t properly say Abū al-Qāsim Khalaf ibn al-‘Abbās al-Zahrāwī al-Ansari.

Not to mention the signature.

If you could Latinize your own name to reflect those of antiquity, what would you choose? Leave a comment with your fancy name!