§55. Confusion of Names.--A system so elaborate as that we have described was almost sure to be misunderstood or misapplied, and in the later days of the Republic and under the Empire we find all law and order disregarded. The giving of the _praenōmen_ to the child seems to have been delayed too long sometimes, and burial inscriptions are numerous which have in place of a first name the word _pūpus_ (_PVP_) "child," showing that the little one had died unnamed. One such inscription gives the age of the unnamed child as sixteen years. Then confusion was caused by the misuse of the _praenōmen_. Sometimes two are found in one name, e.g., _Pūblius Aelius Aliēnus Archelāus Mārcus_. Sometimes words ending like the _nōmen_ in _-ius_ were used as _praenōmina_: Cicero tells us that one _Numerius Quīntius Rūfus_ owed his escape from death in a riot to his ambiguous first name. The familiar Gāius must have been a _nōmen_ in very ancient times. Like irregularities occur in the use of the _nōmen_. Two in a name were not uncommon, one being derived from the family of the mother perhaps; occasionally three or four are used, and fourteen are found in the name of one of the consuls of the year 169 A.D. Then by a change, the converse of that mentioned above, a word might go out of use as a _praenōmen_ and become a _nōmen_: Cicero's enemy _Lūcius Sergius Catilīna_ had for his gentile name _Sergius_, which had once been a first name (§41). The _cognōmen_ was similarly abused. It ceased to denote the family and came to distinguish members of the same family, as the _praenōmina_ originally had done: thus the three sons of Marcus Annaeus Seneca, for example, were called _Mārcus Annaeus Novātus_, _Lūcius Annaeus Seneca_, and _Lūcius Annaeus Mela_. So, too, a word used as a _cognōmen_ in one name might be used as a fourth element in another: for example in the names _Lūcius Cornēlius Sulla_ and _Lūcius Cornēlius Lentulus Sura_ the third and fourth elements respectively are really the same, being merely shortened forms of _Surula_. Finally it may be remarked that the same name might be arranged differently at different times: in the consular lists we find the same man called _Lūcius Lūcrētius Tricipitīnus Flāvus_ and _Lūcius Lūcrētius Flāvus Tricipitīnus_.