§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 _praenomen_ 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 _pupus_ (_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 _praenomen_. Sometimes two are found in one name, e.g., _Publius Aelius Alienus Archelaus Marcus_. Sometimes words ending like the _nomen_ in _-ius_ were used as _praenomina_: Cicero tells us that one _Numerius Quintius Rufus_ owed his escape from death in a riot to his ambiguous first name. The familiar Gaius must have been a _nomen_ in very ancient times. Like irregularities occur in the use of the _nomen_. 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 _praenomen_ and become a _nomen_: Cicero's enemy _Lucius Sergius Catilina_ had for his gentile name _Sergius_, which had once been a first name (§41). The _cognomen_ was similarly abused. It ceased to denote the family and came to distinguish members of the same family, as the _praenomina_ originally had done: thus the three sons of Marcus Annaeus Seneca, for example, were called _Marcus Annaeus Novatus_, _Lucius Annaeus Seneca_, and _Lucius Annaeus Mela_. So, too, a word used as a _cognomen_ in one name might be used as a fourth element in another: for example in the names _Lucius Cornelius Sulla_ and _Lucius Cornelius 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 _Lucius Lucretius Tricipitinus Flavus_ and _Lucius Lucretius Flavus Tricipitinus_.