Rejection of One’s Origins, Self-nomination, and Circumstantial Variants. The Case of the Humanist Giulio Pomponio Leto

Abstract

This study offers, for the first time, a detailed examination of the structure and potential origins of the humanist name adopted by the renowned Lucanian intellectual, a direct descendant of the powerful Sanseverino family, specifically its branch of the Counts of Marsico. The consistent use of this name appears to have been a deliberate strategy to obscure his noble lineage in the public eye. The analysis focuses on three key aspects: first, the distinctive trinominal form Julius Pomponius Laetus, clearly modeled on Roman naming conventions, whose first element may preserve the author’s baptismal name; second, the gentilician Pomponius, plausibly inspired by the namesake dedicatee of a first-century BCE inscription still visible on a shrine embedded in the façade of the main church in Teggiano—his birthplace and home to the family’s castle residence; and finally, the mobility of the third element, which, in its occasional substitution, seems to reflect the shifting inner states of the man himself.