Vopiscus is a Latin praenomen

Praenomen

The praenomen was a personal name chosen by the parents of a Roman child. It was first bestowed on the dies lustricus , the eighth day after the birth of a girl, or the ninth day after the birth of a boy...

, or personal name

Given name

A given name, in Western contexts often referred to as a first name, is a personal name that specifies and differentiates between members of a group of individuals, especially in a family, all of whose members usually share the same family name...

, which was occasionally used during the period of the Roman Republic

Roman Republic

The Roman Republic was the period of the ancient Roman civilization where the government operated as a republic. It began with the overthrow of the Roman monarchy, traditionally dated around 508 BC, and its replacement by a government headed by two consuls, elected annually by the citizens and...

, and later as a cognomen

Cognomen

The cognomen nōmen "name") was the third name of a citizen of Ancient Rome, under Roman naming conventions. The cognomen started as a nickname, but lost that purpose when it became hereditary. Hereditary cognomina were used to augment the second name in order to identify a particular branch within...

, surviving into imperial times. The feminine form is Vopisca. The name was not usually abbreviated, but is sometimes found with the abbreviation Vop.

The praenomen Vopiscus was always rare, but it was familiar to the scholar Marcus Terentius Varro

Marcus Terentius Varro

Marcus Terentius Varro was an ancient Roman scholar and writer. He is sometimes called Varro Reatinus to distinguish him from his younger contemporary Varro Atacinus.-Biography:...

, who described it as an antique name, no longer in general use by the 1st century BC. The only family known to have used it was gens Julia, but as with other uncommon praenomina, it may have been more common amongst the plebeians and in the countryside. The name was later used as a cognomen, becoming more frequent in imperial times

Roman Empire

The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....

. Vopiscus may once have been a praenomen in families that later used it as a cognomen, such as the Flavii and the Pompeii.

Origin and meaning of the name

Gaius Plinius Secundus

Pliny the Elder

Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...

, whose opinion was followed by a number of later authorities, related the popular etymology of the name, explaining that Vopiscus was originally given to a child whose twin brother or sister was born dead. This extremely unlikely explanation for the name is rejected by Chase as an example of false etymology

False etymology

Folk etymology is change in a word or phrase over time resulting from the replacement of an unfamiliar form by a more familiar one. Unanalyzable borrowings from foreign languages, like asparagus, or old compounds such as samblind which have lost their iconic motivation are...

. However, the true meaning of the name remains unclear.