The first part of the name

One could argue that the name of the boy is not that important. Why bother? The first reason is that we are dealing with a tombstone, a very personal monument, made with the intention to commemorate the deceased. His name is therefore an essential part of it. The second reason is that a closer look at the name can give us more information about the production process of the mason who carved the inscription.

Let's start with the first part of the name. The catalogs all agree that it starts with an L. However, the left part of the stone is broken off, as the missing letter V of the word [V]IXIT ("lived") makes clear in the second line. There might have been another letter before the L that is now missing.

Janssen doubts whether the third letter is C or G. The uncertainty is caused by the I that is written against the C or G. Therefore, it is not clear which of these two very similar letters was meant by the mason. In the early Roman alphabet, there was originally no separate letter for a voiced or unvoiced guttural: both were spelled with the letter C. Only later, a little hook in the right corner was added to distinguish the voiced G from the unvoiced C. The ancient way of writing can still be seen in the abbreviation C. for the Roman first name Gaius.