Roman naming practices varied greatly over the centuries between the founding of Rome to the early middle ages. However, the practice of the elite period between the mid-Republic and the early Empire has come to be seen as the classical Roman naming convention. This is likely to be because this period provides good evidence of naming practices of the best documented class in the best documented Roman period.

By the end of the Republican era , a name for an aristocratic male citizen comprised three parts (tria nomina): praenomen (given name), nomen (or nomen gentile or simply gentilicium, being the name of the gens or clan) and cognomen (name of a family line within the gens). Sometimes a second or third cognomen, called agnomen, was added. The nomen, and later, cognomen were virtually always hereditary. During the Imperial period, the number and options for elements within a name considerably increased. The naming conventions for the later period grew out of a desire to indicate status, connections and ancestry, in a way that was much more wide-ranging than could be shown by the tria nomina.