Quintus

Historical scholarship

Passages quoted verbatim from public-domain reference works. They reflect the scholarship of their time, not current consensus, and may use obsolete spellings.

• 1884From the archives

  QUINTUS— “fifth”

  Why Quintus should have been so much more prevalent with the Romans than the earlier numerals does not appear, but it was one of the commonest prænomina, and was always indicated by the initial _Q_; while the Greeks called it Κοίντος. Thence came the Quintian, or Quinctian, gens, an Alban family removed by Tullus Hostilius to Rome, so plain and stern in manners that even their women wore no gold, and principally illustrious in the person of Cæso Quinctius Cincinnatus. An…

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  Why Quintus should have been so much more prevalent with the Romans than the earlier numerals does not appear, but it was one of the commonest prænomina, and was always indicated by the initial _Q_; while the Greeks called it Κοίντος. Thence came the Quintian, or Quinctian, gens, an Alban family removed by Tullus Hostilius to Rome, so plain and stern in manners that even their women wore no gold, and principally illustrious in the person of Cæso Quinctius Cincinnatus. An obscure family named Quintianus sprung again from this gens, and in time gave its name to one of the missionary martyrs of Gaul, who, in 287, was put to death at Augusta Veromanduorum on the Somme. His corpse being discovered in 641, the great goldsmith bishop of Noyon, St. Eloi, made for it a magnificent shrine, and built over it a church, whence the town took the name of St. Quentin, and Quentin became prevalent in the neighbourhood. It was also popular in Scotland and Ireland, but it is there intended to represent Cu-mhaighe (hound of the plain), pronounced Cooey. From the diminutive of the Quinctian gens came Quintilius, and thence again Quintilianus, the most noted Roman rhetorician.…

  Yonge, History of Christian Names (1884), Part IV, Chapter II (Latin Prænomina), Section V (Numeral Names) · Public domain (Project Gutenberg)