What's In A Name?

I get many comments on my middle name, Cicero. I love my name and that's why as an adult I decided it was the name I would be addressed by. Of course I still have childhood friends and some family that refuse to call me this but I don't let them get to me; I know they mean well. Well, for those that have never heard the name Cicero I always try to give a one-line history lesson on how great the first Cicero was. He was a character in the movie Gladiator, a neighborhood in Chicago IL, a city in New York, an ancient Roman philosipher, and most important, Cicero is me! Well, here is what wikipedia has to say about Cicero the first...

"Cicero is generally held to be one of the most versatile minds of ancient Rome. An impressive orator and successful lawyer, Cicero thought that his political career was his most important achievement. Today, he is appreciated primarily for his humanism and philosophical and political writings. His voluminous correspondence, much of it addressed to his friend Atticus, has been especially influential, introducing the art of refined letter writing to European culture. Cicero's speeches and letters remain some of the most important primary sources that survive on the last days of the Roman Republic. During the chaotic latter half of the first century B.C. marked by civil wars and the dictatorship of Gaius Julius Caesar, Cicero championed a return to the traditional republican government. However, his career as a statesman was marked by inconsistencies and a tendency to shift his position in response to changes in the political climate. His indecision may be attributed to his sensitive and impressionable personality; he was prone to overreaction in the face of political and private change. "Would that he had been able to endure prosperity with greater self-control and adversity with more fortitude!" wrote C. Asinius Pollio, a contemporary Roman statesman and historian. Cicero was born in 106 BC in Arpinum, a hill town 100 kilometers (60 miles) south of Rome. So, although a great master of Latin rhetoric and composition, Cicero was not "Roman" in the traditional sense, and was quite self-conscious of this for his entire life. Cicero's childhood dream was "Always to be best and far to excel the others," a line taken from Homer's Iliad. Cicero's cognomen, or personal surname, comes from the Latin for chickpea. In 60 BC Julius Caesar invited Cicero to be the fourth member of his existing partnership with Pompey and Marcus Lucinius Crasses, an assembly that would eventually be called the First Triumvirate. Cicero refused the invitation because he suspected it would undermine the Republic."

To make a long story very short, he was a remarkable man. His story has a tragic ending but his life represented so much that is good in the world. Don't take my word for it, do some studying on Cicero. xoxoxo