Sulpicius is a Roman family name of uncertain meaning. It belonged to the ancient and influential gens Sulpicia, one of the most prestigious patrician families in the Roman Republic, though the nomen was also borne by plebeian branches, some descended from freedmen of the gens. The name first appears in the consular Fasti with Servius Sulpicius Camerinus Cornutus, who held the consulship in 500 BC—just nine years after the establishment of the Republic—and the last consul of this name was Sextus Sulpicius Tertullus in AD 158.
Etymology and Usage
The precise etymology of Sulpicius is obscure; it may be of Etruscan origin or derived from an Indo-European root. The patrician Sulpicii primarily used the praenomina Publius, Servius, Quintus, and Gaius, with Marcus known from the father of Gaius Sulpicius Peticus (consul in 364, 361, 357, 355, and 353 BC). Several members of the gens produced distinguished careers as consuls, senators, and generals; notable figures include Servius Sulpicius Galba (practor 54 BC and later emperor for seven months in AD 68–69), the jurist Servius Sulpicius Rufus (one of the greatest Roman legal minds), and Publius Sulpicius Rufus (a reformer and tribune in 88 BC).
Religious and Later Significance
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the name retained Christian importance through a few early saints, particularly a 7th-century bishop of Bourges (Saint Sulpicius of Bourges), whose cult persisted into the Middle Ages. The feminine form Sulpicia is also attested—the notable bearer Sulpicia the Elder being a Roman poetess of the Augustan era whose work is among the few surviving Latin poems by a woman. The umbilicus of Romania, in more recent times the land had almost lost this praenomen - more often it persisted in Italy and France via the Late Latin suffix, but nonetheless enough registers of Christianity though.
Sources: Wikipedia — Sulpicia gens