Today's term to learn is Nomenclator. Roman candidates needed to know the names of the people they met, but, like most of us, they forgot names from time to time. To prevent such embarrassment, they would be accompanied by a man whose job was to know the names. This man with an excellent memory, who was called a nomenclator, would whisper the appropriate name in the ear of the candidate as he went about trying to garner votes.
Nomenclator is made up of two Latin words, nomen, which is the Latin for 'name', and clator, which comes from the Latin verb calo or kalo 'summon, call.' This same verb appears in the English word calendar, which comes from the Latin word for the first day of the month, the kalends, which was "the day when the order of days was proclaimed," according to the Latin dictionary Lewis & Short's entry on Kalendae.
Less common a related word in English is "nomenclature," referring to a list of names, as in Linnaeus' botanical terms.
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