The name
Caesar probably originated from a dialect of
LatiumLazio , is a region of central Italy, bordered by Tuscany, Umbria, and Marche to the north, Abruzzo to the east, Campania to the south, and the Tyrrhenian Sea to the west.- Geography :...
which did not share the
rhotacismRhotacism may refer to several phenomena related to the usage of the consonant r .*the excessive or idiosyncratic use of the r;...
of the Roman dialect. (That is, the
s between vowels did not change to
r.) Using the
LatinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Roman conquest, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe...
alphabetAn alphabet is a standardized set of letters basic written symbols or graphemes each of which roughly represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. There are other systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or...
as it existed in the day of
Julius CaesarGaius Julius Caesar , , was a Roman military and political leader. He played a critical role in the transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....
(
100 BCYear 100 BC was a year of the pre-Julian calendar.-Rome:* Consuls: Lucius Valerius Flaccus, Gaius Marius .* Manius Aquillius celebrates an ovation for victories in the Second Servile War....
–
44 BCYear 44 BC was a common year starting on Sunday of the Julian calendar.-Rome:* Consuls: Gaius Julius Caesar, Marcus Antonius....
) (i.e., without lower case letters, "J", or "U"), Caesar's name is properly rendered
GAIVS IVLIVS CAESAR (the spelling
CAIVS is also attested and is interchangeable with the more common
GAIVS; however the letter
C was used with its antique pronunciation of [g], as it was an adaptation of Greek
gamma).
The name
Caesar probably originated from a dialect of
LatiumLazio , is a region of central Italy, bordered by Tuscany, Umbria, and Marche to the north, Abruzzo to the east, Campania to the south, and the Tyrrhenian Sea to the west.- Geography :...
which did not share the
rhotacismRhotacism may refer to several phenomena related to the usage of the consonant r .*the excessive or idiosyncratic use of the r;...
of the Roman dialect. (That is, the
s between vowels did not change to
r.) Using the
LatinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Roman conquest, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe...
alphabetAn alphabet is a standardized set of letters basic written symbols or graphemes each of which roughly represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. There are other systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or...
as it existed in the day of
Julius CaesarGaius Julius Caesar , , was a Roman military and political leader. He played a critical role in the transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....
(
100 BCYear 100 BC was a year of the pre-Julian calendar.-Rome:* Consuls: Lucius Valerius Flaccus, Gaius Marius .* Manius Aquillius celebrates an ovation for victories in the Second Servile War....
–
44 BCYear 44 BC was a common year starting on Sunday of the Julian calendar.-Rome:* Consuls: Gaius Julius Caesar, Marcus Antonius....
) (i.e., without lower case letters, "J", or "U"), Caesar's name is properly rendered
GAIVS IVLIVS CAESAR (the spelling
CAIVS is also attested and is interchangeable with the more common
GAIVS; however the letter
C was used with its antique pronunciation of [g], as it was an adaptation of Greek
gamma). It is often seen abbreviated to
C. IVLIVS CAESAR. (The letterform
Æ is a
ligatureIn writing and typography, a ligature occurs where two or more graphemes are joined as a single glyph. Ligatures usually replace consecutive characters sharing common components and are part of a more general class of glyphs called "contextual forms" where the specific shape of a letter depends on...
, 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 , or, alternately, with
praenomen . 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 (
KaiserKaiser is the German title meaning "Emperor", with Kaiserin being the female equivalent, "Empress". Like the Russian Czar it is directly derived from the Latin Emperors' title of Caesar, which in turn is derived from the name of Julius Caesar...
), itself an early
loanwordA loanword is a word borrowed from one language and incorporated into another.-General:By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept, whereby it is the meaning or idiom that is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself.The word loanword is itself a calque of the German...
.
Roman nomenclature is somewhat different from the modern English form.
Gaius,
Iulius, and
CaesarCaesar , Latin: Caesar , is a title of imperial character. It derives from the cognomen of Julius Caesar, the Roman dictator...
are Caesar's
praenomenIn Roman naming conventions, the praenomen was the only name in which parents had some choice, roughly equivalent to the given name of today. It was a personal appellation given to a male infant on his day of lustration. As a rule only the immediate family would call a person by his praenomen...
, nomen,
cognomenThe cognomen was the third name of a citizen of Ancient Rome, under Roman naming conventions. The cognomen started as a nickname, but lost that purpose when it became hereditary...
, 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. Contemporary writers sometimes referred to him as "Gaius Caesar". His grand-nephew, Gaius Octavius, duly took the full name "Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus" upon his posthumous adoption in
44 BCYear 44 BC was a common year starting on Sunday of the Julian calendar.-Rome:* Consuls: Gaius Julius Caesar, Marcus Antonius....
, and the name became fused with the
imperialAn emperor is a monarch, usually the sovereign ruler of an empire or another type of imperial realm. Empress is the female equivalent. As a title, "empress" may indicate the wife of an emperor or a woman who rules in her own right...
dignity; in this sense it is preserved in the
GermanGerman is a West Germanic language, thus related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. It is one of the world's major languages and the most widely spoken first language in the European Union. Around the world, German is spoken by approximately 105 million native speakers and also by...
and
BulgarianBulgarian is an Indo-European language, a member of the Slavic linguistic group.Bulgarian demonstrates several linguistic innovations that set it apart from all other Slavic languages except the Macedonian language, such as the elimination of case declension, the development of a suffixed definite...
words
KaiserKaiser is the German title meaning "Emperor", with Kaiserin being the female equivalent, "Empress". Like the Russian Czar it is directly derived from the Latin Emperors' title of Caesar, which in turn is derived from the name of Julius Caesar...
and
TsarTsar or czar , occasionally spelled csar or Tzar in English, is a Slavic term with Bulgarian origins used to designate certain monarchs...
(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 the personal name of Charlemagne.
Meaning of "Caesar"
The original meaning of the name is unknown. The four most common derivations of the
cognomen "Caesar" are given by the writer of the Historia Augusta
(Aelius 2.3):
- from caesaries, 'hair', because the founder of this branch of the family was born with a full head of hair. (Julius Caesar himself was balding in later life.) This is the etymology favored by Festus
Sextus Pompeius Festus was a Roman grammarian, who probably flourished in the later 2nd century AD, perhaps at Narbo in Gaul.He made an epitome in 20 volumes of the encyclopedic treatise in many volumes De verborum significatu, of Verrius Flaccus, a celebrated grammarian who flourished in the...
.
- from caesius, an eye color variously translated today as 'grey', 'blue-grey', and even 'blue'. (Julius Caesar himself had black eyes, Suet. Jul. 45.)
- from caesum, 'cut out', because the first Caesar was cut from his mother's womb (see Caesarean section
A Caesarean section , also known as C-section or Caesar, is a surgical procedure in which incisions are made through a mother's abdomen and uterus to deliver one or more babies...
). This is the etymology favored by Pliny the ElderGaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was an author, naturalist, and natural philosopher as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...
(VII.ix.47 — Latin, English). (Julius Caesar himself could not have been so delivered, because this dangerous operation was normally done only upon a dead woman, and his mother was known to have lived for many years after his birth.)
- from caesai, a "Moorish" (maybe Punic
The Punic language is an extinct Semitic language formerly spoken in the Mediterranean region of North Africa and several Mediterranean islands, by people of the Punic culture.- Description :...
) word for "elephantElephants are large land mammals in two genera of the family Elephantidae: Elephas and Loxodonta. Three species of elephant are living today: the African Bush Elephant, the African Forest Elephant and the Asian Elephant...
" because the first Caesar had killed such a beast in battle.
Some modern writers have also added yet other derivations, but none has reached anything near mainstream acceptance.