Family Relations and Personal Onomastics in the Roman Province of Lusitania: Civic Status, Family, and Identity

Abstract

This dissertation argues that family commemoration and personal naming practices in Lusitania reveal a complex, uneven process of cultural change under Roman rule. Civic status shaped the legal and social possibilities available to communities, but it did not determine identity or family practice in a uniform way. By systematically analyzing both the relations expressed between dedicators and deceased on funerary epitaphs and the personal names of those attested, this dissertation demonstrates that the impact of Roman rule and civic status on local practices in the province of Lusitania was uneven and highly variable. Some communities adopted Latin names and duo/tria nomina relatively early, while others preserved indigenous names and single-name structures even after gaining new civic rights. The result was not a single provincial pattern, but a series of local responses in which people adapted Roman civic and epigraphic habits to express family memory, status, and belonging.