§56. There is even greater variation in the names of persons who had passed from one family into another by adoption. Some took the additional name (§52) from the _stirps_ instead of from the _gens_, that is, from the _cognomen_ instead of from the _nomen_. A son of Marcus Claudius Marcellus was adopted by a certain Publius Cornelius Lentulus and ought to have been called _Publius Cornelius Lentulus Claudianus_; he took instead the name _Publius Cornelius Lentulus Marcellinus_, and this name descended to his children. The confusion in this direction is well illustrated by the name of the famous Marcus Junius Brutus. A few years before Caesar fell by his hand, Brutus, as we usually call him, was adopted by his mother's brother, Quintus Servilius Caepio, and ought to have been called _Quintus Servilius Caepio Iunianus_. For some reason unknown to us he retained his own _cognomen_, and even his close friend Cicero seems scarcely to know what to call him. Sometimes he writes of him as _Quintus Caepio Brutus_, sometimes as _Marcus Brutus_, sometimes simply as _Brutus_. The great scholar of the first century, Asconius, calls him _Marcus Caepio_. Finally it may be noticed that late in the Empire we find a man struggling under the load of forty names.
§57. Names of Women.--No very satisfactory account of the names of women can be given, because it is impossible to discover any system in the choice and arrangement of those that have come down to us. It may be said in general that the threefold name was unknown in the best days of the Republic, and that _praenomina_ were rare and when used were not abbreviated. We find such _praenomina_ as _Paulla_ and _Vibia_ (the masculine forms of which early disappeared), _Gaia_, _Lucia_, and _Publia_, and it is probable that the daughter took these from her father. More common were the adjectives _Maxuma_ and _Minor_, and the numerals _Secunda_ and _Tertia_, but these unlike the corresponding names of men seem always to have denoted the place of the bearer among a group of sisters. It was more usual for the unmarried woman to be called by her father's _nomen_ in its feminine form, _Tullia_, _Cornelia_, with the addition of her father's _cognomen_ in the genitive case, _Caecilia Metelli_, followed later by the letter _f_ (=_filia_) to mark the relationship. Sometimes she used her mother's _nomen_ after her father's. The married woman, if she passed into her husband's hand (_manus_, §35) by the ancient patrician ceremony, originally took his _nomen_, just as an adopted son took the name of the family into which he passed, but it can not be shown that the rule was universally or even usually observed. Under the later forms of marriage she retained her maiden name. In the time of the Empire we find the threefold name for women in general use, with the same riotous confusion in selection and arrangement as prevailed in the case of the names of men at the same time.