Gentilitial

Occasionally – as for example in the paintings of the Tomb of the Inscriptions at Tarquinii – members of the gentilitial class to which the family of the dead man belonged may also be seen dancing.

The tribe, as its name (phyle) shows, had an ethnical or gentilitial origin.

Now, as Perikhanian observes, and as Khorenats‘i’s tradition confirms, the Is-pahbudhān were probably the original holders of the office of spāhbed, and as a result came to use the title of the office as their gentilitial name.

The easy to remember and pronounce disyllabic gentilitials such as “Aztec,” “Toltec,” “Olmec,” and “Mixtec,” were readily accepted and have become so deeply entrenched that any attempt to replace them with putatively technically more correct terms would seem hopelessly doomed.

The suffix -it was most likely added originally to root morphemes ending in -ī (e.g., Palaeosyrian ’à-rí-tum /harītum/, “pregnant”; Hebrew bəkīt, “crying”) and to gentilitials in -iy > ī (§29.41) in order to form their feminine (e.g. Mō’ābīt, “Moabite”) , although a formation with addition of -at > -ā(h) is also attested (e.g. Mō’ăbiyyā).

On the abdication of Diocletian and Maximian (May 1st 305) Maximinus Daia, nephew of the eastern caesar Galerius, became his Caesar and assumed upon himself his uncle’s gentilitials, Galerius Valerius.

Ahout toponyma, the praedial Latin suffix -anus is frequent and recalls the gentilitials of the owners. But also “the suffix of Celtic origin - together with Roman gentilitials - -āko (and -ago as Romance derivative).”

Finally, the presence of aristocratic tumuli (e.g. in the Monteroni necropolises) together with the existence, already in the Archaic period, of gentilitials associated with the local toponym (Alsaia) suggest that an aristocratic component was directly involved in the dynamics of territorial occupation.