Vocative

Revision as of 08:25, 22 July 2008

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When we call someone by name in Latin, we use a form of the name called the "vocative case". Here are the basic rules for making a vocative:

• If a name ends in "-ius", then the vocative ends in "-i". "Tullius" becomes "Tulli".
• If a name ends in "-us", then the vocative ends in "-e". "Marcus" becomes "Marce".
• All other names do not change at all. "Cicero" stays "Cicero", "Livia" stays "Livia" and so on.

Usage in practice

It is a good idea in general to use the praenomen and nomen combination (the first two parts of the name):

• To say hello to Marcus Lucretius Agricola you would write "Salve, Marce Lucreti!".
• To say hello to Aulus Apollonius Cordus you would write "Salve, Aule Apolloni!".
• To say hello to Gaius Equitius Cato you would write "Salve, Gai Equiti!".

A more informal style is for friends to use the cognomen (the last part of the name):

• "Salve, Agricola!"
• "Salve, Corde!"
• "Salve, Cato!"

Only if you are family members or very, very close friends indeed with these people you could write:

• "Salve, Marce!""
• "Salve, Aule!"
• "Salve, Gai!"

There is a complete discussion of *which* name you should use at Using Roman names.

Algorithmically speaking...

This perl function will return the vocative form of a name.

    sub makeVocative
    {
        my ($nomen) = @_;

        my @elements = split(/\s+/, $nomen);
   
        for (my $i=0; $i<=$#elements; $i++)
        { 
            $elements[$i] =~ s/ius$/i/;
            $elements[$i] =~ s/us$/e/;
            $elements[$i] =~ s/IUS$/I/;
            $elements[$i] =~ s/US$/E/;
        }
        return join(' ', @elements);
    }