Valens/Valentinus, Flora/Florinus and Marcus/Marcianus

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Has anyone produced evidence that any cognomen was constructed from a praenomen qua praenomen?

Evidence is a tricky term. Of course Kajanto based his understanding on evidence. But this 'evidence' is certainly subjective. There isn't a smoking gun somewhere which proves how and why cognomina were constructed as far as I know. Scholars reconstruct 'how things were done' based on the evidence but they have to argue how and why things are the way they are. For instance Marcellus is said to be a cognomen developed from the praenomen Marcus. How, why is based on evidence. I don't know if there are arguments to the contrary. But it seems to be widely accepted among scholars

Marcus (Latin pronunciation: [ˈmaɾkʊs]) is a Latin praenomen, or personal name, which was one of the most common names throughout Roman history. ... The praenomen was used by both patrician and plebeian families, and gave rise to the patronymic gens Marcia, as well as the cognomen Marcellus. It was regularly abbreviated M.https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q ... jC18hYqZww

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that cognomina were derived from praenomina (although the Google books view is limited where I live):

Again, Lucullus is the cognomen of Lucii Licinii since the end of the third century B.C. Because Lucius is not found as a republican cognomen, Lucullus was probably coined from the praenomen of the Licinii. A similar case is Marcellus, a family cognomen of Claudii. Since the praenomen of this branch of the gens was most often Marcus, the origin of Marcellus cannot be brought under doubt. https://books.google.com/books?id=XzQLA ... YQ6AEIJDAA

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Unless I am reading this incorrectly there seems to be evidence outside of Kajanto for this. https://books.google.com/books?id=6HPXD ... en&f=false It would seem that an individual took a praenomen as his cognomen and then his heirs added -ianus to that praenomen. Again unless I am reading this incorrectly.

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Bailey seems to indicate that in the army outposts in Gaul, the Rhineland and other places the inscriptions show that:

[o]n receiving Roman citizenship, the " regular " custom was to adopt the praenomen and nomen of the patron who had conferred it (hence the enormous number of Roman citizens who bore the first two names of emperors — P. Aelii) for example, recording grants of citizenship by Hadrian or T. Flavii by Vespasian, Titus or Domitian); but in Gaul and the Rhineland and, we may add, in Britain, many people preferred to convert their existing single names, or their fathers' names, into new Roman nomina, and Simplicius is merely one example of such conversion.20 The name is, in fact, attested on two other inscriptions found in Britain: Simplicia was the dedicator of a votive offering to a local god equated with Mars, found at Martlesham in Suffolk,20 and a sarcophagus in York preserves the memory of Simplicia Florentina, the infant daughter of a soldier of legio VI Victrix, Felicius Simplex,21 whose own nomen has been formed from the cognomen Felix, while he has modified his own cognomen to provide a nomen for his daughter. https://books.google.com/books?id=zmloA ... YQ6AEIJDAA

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To spin

I think I solved the mystery of Epiphanius's Μαρκώσιοι but it only brings forward an even bigger mystery:

341 (a) Schol. Lond. Dion. Thrac. 12 (p. 542 Hilgard) = Anecd. Oxon. iv 329 Cramer (cf. i 162)

ὁ μὲν διὰ τοῦ -ωσιος Ῥηγίνων ἐστίν, ἐπεὶ συνεχὴς παρ᾿ αὐτοῖς ἀπὸ γενικῆς γίνεται· ἀνάκων ἀνακώσιος, χαρίτων χαριτώσιος.

Scholiast on Dionysius Thrax

The adjectival form in -ωσιος belongs to Rhegium: the inhabitants often form the adjective from a genitive, e.g. ἀνακώσιος, ‘lordly’, from ἀνάκων, ‘lords’, χαριτώσιος, ‘graceful’, from χαρίτων, ‘graces’.

It would seem that if Epiphanius was copying out Irenaeus's Adversus Haereses the terminology reflects contact with a regional dialect in Italy. I can't explain Epiphanius's terminology any other way. He himself never uses this suffix to name heresies. It is a remnant of the earliest surviving reporting about the group. The reporter spoke a strange form of Greek which may explain Irenaeus's own statement at the beginning of Adv Haer viz. "I speak a strange dialect" (preface).

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There is also an archaic form of Greek perhaps spoken in a colony like Rhegium where the genitive plural -ίων for instance παιδ-ίων

http://westminsterresearch.wmin.ac.uk/1 ... poster.pdf

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Irenaeus was the cognomen of an individual who consistently referenced his opponents by only their praenomen.

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Where did Epiphanius get the unusual dialectical form ώσιοι from the very archaic Greek colony from Reggio Calabria? He began is dictation to Anatolius by identifying the sect with the title of the section:

Κατὰ Μαρκωσίων

Then, likely holding Irenaeus's original treatise in his hand went on to declare:

Μάρκος δέ τις, ἀφ' οὗπερ οἱ Μαρκώσιοι καλούμενοι

A certain Marcus, the founder of the so-called Marcosians

Then after paraphrasing the contents of Irenaeus's account either he dictated the entire section (as Jacobs believes) or Anatolius subsequently added to the dictated paraphrase (as I suspect):

Ἐγὼ τοίνυν ἵνα μὴ εἰς δεύτερον κάματον ἑαυτὸν ἐπιδῶ, ἀρκεσθῆναι δεῖν ἡγησάμην τοῖς ἀπὸ τοῦ μακαριωτάτου καὶ ἁγιωτάτου Εἰρηναίου κατ' αὐτοῦ τοῦ Μάρκου καὶ τῶν ἐξ αὐτοῦ ὁρμωμένων πραγματευθεῖσιν, ἅτινα ἐνταῦθα πρὸς ἔπος ἐκθέσθαι ἐσπούδασα, καὶ ἔστιν τάδε. φάσκει γὰρ αὐτὸς Εἰρηναῖος ὁ ἅγιος ἐν τῷ ὑποφαίνειν τὰ ὑπ' αὐτῶν γενόμενα, λέγων οὕτως

But for my part, so as not to commit myself to a second hard task I feel I should be content with the work written against Marcus himself and his successors by the most holy and blessed Irenaeus. I hasten to publish this here word for word, and it runs as follows. For St. Irenaeus himself says the following in his disclosure of the things they did: From the writings of St. Irenaeus

The question of course is whether Irenaeus's barbaric dialect (Praef.1) can be identified? Apparently it can from his attempts at isometra or gematria in Book 5. He spells Latin (Λατεινος for λατινος, Latinus) https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%9B%C ... E%BF%CF%82 and Τειταν, i.e., Titus.

It should be noted also the odd spelling of 'Christ' in the cited text from Irenaeus:

And the Saviour's spoken name, Jesous, is of six letters, but his unutterable name of twenty-four. 'Uios Chreistos (Χρειστός)' is of twelve letters, but the ineffable name in Christ is of thirty. And she calls him alpha and omega for this reason, to make mention of the dove, since this is 'dove's' numerical value.

9:1 But Jesus has the following ineffable origin, she says. From the Mother of all, the first tetrad, the second tetrad34 came forth in the role of daughter and became an ogdoad, out of which a decad came forth. Now there were a decad and an ogdoad.

9:2 Joining the ogdoad once more and multiplying it by ten,35 the decad produced the next number, eighty. Multiplying the eighty by ten again it generated the number 800, so that the sum total of the letters which issue from eight times ten is an eight, an eighty, and an 800, which is 'Jesus.'

9:3 For counted by the sum which is found in its letters, the word, 'Jesus,' is 888. You are now clear as to Jesus' origin beyond the heavens, as they explain it.

9:4 And this is why the Greek alphabet contains eight units, eight tens, and eight hundreds, giving the figure of 888—in other words, Jesus, who is composed of all the numbers. He is thus called 'alpha and omega' to indicate his origin from all.

9:5 And again: When the first tetrad was added to itself cumulatively the number ten was produced; for when one, two, three and four are added they make ten, or iota, and they hold that this is Jesus.

9:6 But 'Chreistos (Χρειστός)' too, she says, which has eight letters, means the first ogdoad which, in the iota's embrace, brought forth Jesus.

Yes Irenaeus is citing what the followers of Marcus say (theoretically) but he does not correct them for identifying Christos as containing eight letters. He later criticizes the Marcosians for understanding 'Jesus' to = 888 but not for their bad spelling of Χρειστός which likely means he also spelled the name this way.

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More curious dialectal arguments in the Marcosian section of Irenaeus:

The name of Savior, lesous, has six letters, and when only the sound that each letter represents is pronounced, the name is unutterable. But how is it unutterable, and how does it have twenty-four letters? Irenaeus suggests the solution in 1.14.2 when speaking about delta; namely, when the names of the letters that make up that name delta are spelled out, and again the names of each one of those letters in turn, it cannot be pronounced eg. e.g., Deltaepsilonlambdataualpha, etc. So with Jesus, it would be lotaetasigmaomicronupsilonsigma, and then the names of each of these letters in turn ad infinitum. But how did he arrive at the number twenty-four? Hippolytus, Haer. 6.49.4 (GCS 26.182) suggests the answer when for Khreistos, the other name of Jesus, he got the numeric value twenty-four. See n. 3. So, for lesous it would be: four for iota, two for eta (written ei), five for sigma, two for omicron (written ou), six for upsilon, five for sigma. For more on this see Harvey 1.145 n. 3

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Also there seems to be a correction of an original spelling of Silence (Σιγή) with five letters in the source material (i.e. Σειγὴ)

Ἄρρητος καὶ Σιγή, Πατήρ τε καὶ Ἀλήθεια. ταύτης δὲ τῆς τετράδος ὁ σύμπας ἀριθμός ἐστι στοιχείων εἰκοσιτεσσάρων. τὸ γὰρ Ἄρρητος ὄνομα γράμματα ἔχει ἐν ἑαυτῷ ἑπτά, ἡ δὲ Σειγὴ πέντε καὶ ὁ Πατὴρ πέντε καὶ ἡ Ἀλήθεια ἑπτά, ἃ συντεθέντα ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτό, τὰ δὶς πέντε καὶ δὶς ἑπτά, τὸν τῶν εἰκοσιτεσσάρων ἀριθμὸν ἀνεπλήρωσεν.

Arretos and Sige, Pater and Aletheia. The full total of this tetrad is twenty-four sounds. For the name, Arretos, has seven letters, Seige has five, Pater five, and Aletheia seven. Added together, the twice five and the twice seven, these gave the same number of sounds.

Only in the place where the text says that Silence has five letters is the original form of the manuscript preserved.