Tacitus as a Baby Name. Meaning and Origin of Tacitus

What is the meaning of the name Tacitus ?

The baby name Tacitus is a boy name , 3 syllables long and is pronounced TAS-i-təs.

Tacitus is Latin in Origin.

Tacitus is a Latin masculine name first attested as the Roman cognomen Tacitus, identical with the adjective tacitus. In classical Latin, tacitus is the perfect passive participle of tacēre, to be silent, with the adjectival sense silent, unspoken, secret, or passed over in silence. The stem tac- also underlies English tacit and taciturn, though those are later learned borrowings rather than sources of the name.

Roman use is best known from Publius or Gaius Cornelius Tacitus, the senator and historian of the Annals and Histories, and from the third-century emperor Marcus Claudius Tacitus. A related feminine form, Tacita, appears in Roman religious lore as a silent goddess associated with the dead and later with Larunda. Modern use is rare, mostly antiquarian or literary; Romance-language forms include Italian Tacito, Spanish and Portuguese Tácito, and French Tacite.

⚙ Tacitus is an extremely rare name. Across our dataset of national birth registries and international name records, Tacitus appears only 3 times in total — found in 3 countries. If you're considering it, you'd be giving your child a name almost nobody else has.