Caeso (praenomen)

Caeso or Kaeso (Classical Latin: [ˈkae̯soː]) is a Latin praenomen, or personal name, usually abbreviated K. Although never a common name, Caeso was regularly used by a number of prominent families, both patrician and plebeian, during the period of the Roman Republic. The feminine form is Caesula (also spelled Cesula, Caesulla, Caesilla, and Caesillia). The name also gave rise to the patronymic gens Caesonia. Kaeso is the older spelling, dating from the period when the letter K was still frequently used before the vowel A in Latin, and before the letters C and G were differentiated.

The praenomen Caeso was regularly used by the patrician gentes Fabia and Quinctia during the 1st centuries of the Republic, and also by the plebeian gentes Atilia and Duilia (both of which may originally have been patrician). It is also found in the gentes Acilia, Fabricia, and Latria, and must once have been used by the ancestors of gens Caesonia. Its use gradually declined throughout Republican times, and seems to have fallen out of use around the 1st century AD.

The most familiar etymology of this praenomen was given by Gaius Plinius Secundus, and followed by Sextus Pompeius Festus, who derived it from the verb caedere, "to cut," and explained that it was originally given to a child who was cut from the mother's womb, in the operation that came to be known as the Caesarean section. This seems to be a reasonable etymology for the name of the operation, but it is probably an example of false etymology with respect to the name Caeso, as well as the cognomen Caesar, which appears to derive from the same root.

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