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Many Roman family names are so ancient that no one really knows their meaning. Many of them may be older than the Latin language itself and come from Etruscan or other languages of ancient Italy that are now completely lost to us. In Roman legend, Tatius itself was originally said to be the name of a king of the Sabine people of Italy. The only one of my name dictionaries that hazards a guess at the original meaning of Tatius is my Spanish one, (Diccionario de Nombres de Personas by Jose Albaiges Olivart), and it guesses that Tatius might be from Tata, a baby-talk word for "father" -- but that seems to be a somewhat wild guess to me. It is likely that no one will ever know for sure what Tatius originally meant.

This message was edited 11/16/2005, 6:25 PM