For those just coming to the thread, nearly all the comments have been removed because they were speculative, ahistorical, or otherwise not up to our subreddit's standards. Other responses in the same vein will also be removed.

Thank you.

As a follow up question, where does the American habit of placing Roman numerals after their names come from? In Europe it's usually reserved for royalty or Popes.

It's not unprecedented, I can think of a couple examples, at least in English. I believe one of the characters in the film "Brokeback Mountain" was also a female named "Junior," suggesting the practice is not unheard of, at least insofar as that film (and the story it's based on) is grounded in historical reality.

However, the practice is just not very common, for a couple of reasons, usually because of differing middle names or because of dropping the suffix after marriage.

But, on the subject of marriage, recall that, formally, it is still the style for women to be referred to by their husband's full name. For example, "Mrs. John Smith III," so, in that sense, quite a few women might have those suffixes, at least in very formal contexts.

Sorry if this is straying from the topic, but why in the world do we name people the same thing as their ancestors (or ourselves) in the first place? I kind of understand it with royalty & suchlike, but what purpose does it serve for us commoners? Is it just egotism?

Edit: What I mean is, why does the exact name needs to be transcribed to descendants? Were there once restrictions on what people could and couldn't be named, so that the same combination happening more than once within living generations was unavoidable? Does it have to do with inheritance & continuity of the family's property? How far back does this practice go? Is it a result of using family names at all? Is this a question for Anthropologists?

It is my understanding that during Roman (referring to the early Republic, maybe even into Empire times) times, women didn't even necessarily have what we'd call "first names" today. They would be referred to as "the third daughter of Fancius Whatshisname and so on.

1. Is this true (and are there flaws in my understanding from the way I've described it)?
2. Does this and the original question indicate that in general women have been considered lesser than men to an extent that not much effort was expended in choosing names for them?

I keep checking back for an answer to OP. But I feel as if the answer in essence is :"Historically, women didn't matter as much". I would love to be wrong.

I have been dabbling in genealogy lately and it seems that once a woman married off, she was no longer accounted for in the initial family she was born to because she became the property of someone else. Making it difficult to follow the lives of daughters unless you knew the name of the man she married.