So in class we were doing a reading of julius caeser and we get to the part where Augustus get brought up and ive always known him as such but in there he is called Octavius when i looked online sometimes hes also called Octavian. So i have to wonder , do they all reference Augustus caeser and if so are they all just nicknames or what? Can somone please explain? thank you.
I'm going first to explain Roman naming conventions during the Late Republic (1st century BCE), which is the one that applies to Augustus.
Roman male names consisted of three possible parts: praenomen, nomen and cognomen. Thus, Caesar's full name at birth was Gaius Julius Caesar. Let's analyze each of these parts:
Praenomen (e.g. Gaius): Roughly equivalent to a modern given name like, say, John in John Wayne. It's the name family members or close friends would call each other. The differences with modern naming conventions were two. First, there existed a total of less than forty of these names, and during the late republic only a dozen or so were really used. Second, most clans (gens) would usually use the same subset of two to four praenomina. Thus, the men from the gens Julia (Caesar's clan) used only Gaius, Lucius and Sextus. This contributed to the disappearance of praenomina during the Late Empire.
Nomen (e.g. Julius): Roughly equivalent to the modern family name like Wayne for John Wayne. It originally indicated the clan, or gens, that the man belonged to. This was very important for patrician (noble) families, as they could trace the origin of their gens to the founding of Rome. Later in history, when new people became Roman citizens, they would usually adopt the nomen of their patron, and the same happened with freed slaves, so the nomen lost its nobility importance. Being a Publius Claudius didn't mean you were from the noble gens Claudia if your grandfather was a freed slave from a random Claudius. Children would inherit the nomen from their father, but women would not get the one from their husband. Talking about women, by the Late Republic the use of praenomina from them had fallen out of use, so they were usually known only by their nomen, and if there were more than one they were given some sort of "nicknames". Thus, the daughter of Gaius Julius Caesar was known only as Julia. If he had two daughters, they would usually be known as Julia Major and Julia Minor, or Julilla. If he had three, they would be Julia Prima, Julia Secunda, Julia Tertia, and so on.
Cognomen (e.g. Caesar) this is a sort of appendix to the nomen, as a way of differentiating families of the same gens. Thus, in the gens Claudia, there were the Claudius Crassus, the Claudius Nero, the Claudius Pulcher, and others. The cognomen usually were given to some ancestor to describe them (sometimes ironically), and it went on to their descendants. In this case, Crassus means Fat, Nero means Black and Pulcher means Clean. You can imagine how these were first assigned. The cognomina were a usual mark of distinction between rich and powerful families, and the rest, as usually only the former had ancestors worthy enough of having been granted a cognomen. Thus, all patricians had a cognomen, while only the powerful plebeian families had one. In the Late Republic you can find how some of the most prominent characters were so-called New Men, from unimportant families, and notice how their names lack a cognomen. Most notably, Gaius Marius and Cnaeus Pompeius. The union of the nomen and cognomen formed the "family name" that was passed from father to sons, and was the public name of how people called each other. This is how Gaius Julius Caesar is mostly known as Julius Caesar. Many times, the usage of the nomen was useless, so people used only the cognomen for short. Thus you have Caesar, Cicero and Crassus.
Finally, an extra addition was the agnomen, these were extra additions to the name, given usually by the deeds or physical attributes of the person. One of the most known cases of this is Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus, the title given to him by his peers after defeating Hannibal at Zama. These were not usually passed from fathers to sons, but if they were, they were the genesis of new cognomina.
To understand Augustus' case, I have also to explain what happened when a man was adopted in Late Republican society. He would usually adopt the full name of his adoptive father and add an extra cognomen to his name, to reflect the family he came from, usually as aderivative of his old nomen, cognomen or both. Thus, if Gaius Julius Caesar were adopted by Publius Cornelius Scipio, he would be known from now on as Publius Cornelius Scipio Julianus, or Publius Cornelius Scipio Caesaranus, or something like that, but it was not always the case.
Said this, let's explain what's Augustus' case:
He was born Gaius Octavius, period, without a cognomen. He had the same name as his father, also Gaius Octavius.
When he was a few years old, his father gave him the cognomen Thurinus to commemorate his (the father's) victory over some rebel slaves at Thurii. Thus he was Gaius Octavius Thurinus.
When Caesar died in 44 BCE, he adopted Octavius in his will. Thus, he became Gaius Julius Caesar, without any reference to his former gens Octavia, but people anyway added the cognomen Octavianus to distinguish him from his adoptive father. This way he was known as Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, or anglicised and short, just Octavian.
During his public career following his adoption, he adopted the title Imperator to precede his name, which roughly means Commander. This was a PR move to present himself as a powerful general in front of his troops, even if he was thin and sickly and was great mostly at politics, leaving generalship to his best friend Agrippa.
After defeating Marc Antony and Cleopatra in 31 BCE and becoming the sole ruler of Rome, the Senate hailed him as Augustus, which means "Majestic" or "Venerable". He added the title to his name as an agnomen, now being Imperator Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus, usually shortened to Imperator Caesar Augustus, which he used until his death in 14 AD.
You can see he changed names during his life, so historians used this fact to differentiate the periods in his life by using three different names:
I hope your doubt is now solved.
PD: Excuse my clunky English, it is not my native language.
Augustus was born as Gaius Octavius in 63 BC taking his first name or praenomen and family name or nomen after his father Gaius Octavius. In 44 BC, Gaius Octavius was adopted by Gaius Julius Caesar in Caesar's will after his assassination. Octavius accepted this and so by Roman convention changed his name to Gaius Julius Caesar. As he had previously been a member of the gens Octavia he was also probably colloquially given the epithet Octavianus to signify his origins and to distinguish him from his identically named adoptive father although he himself never used it (i.e. Scipio Aemilianus, son of Lucius Aemilius Paulus adopted by Publius Cornelius Scipio). As with many of these epithets it has become anglicised in popular usage over the years and so Octavianus became Octavian. Later in 31 BC with his victory over Anthony (another anglicism) and Cleopatra the Senate voted him the honourific name Augustus which has religious connotations of increase, honour, or elevation. Thereafter he added this to his long form name and it has been associated with him commonly ever since.