Definition
A Latin prepositional phrase meaning "by name," "by the name of," or "under the name or designation of." In legal usage, nomine functions primarily as a grammatical connector in compound Latin terms and maxims, identifying the capacity, title, or designation under which something is done, given, or described. It appears most frequently in the compound phrases nomine poenae and in nomine, and in references to obligations, legacies, or actions taken under a particular name or classification.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Nomine poenae. Literally, "in the name of a penalty." In Roman and civil law, a legacy was described as left nomine poenae when its purpose was not pure bounty but coercion — that is, when the testator attached the gift to a condition designed to compel the heir to act or refrain from acting in a specified way. The legacy functioned less as a benefit and more as an enforcement mechanism embedded in the will. The phrase migrated into English legal usage to describe certain covenants, particularly clauses inserted into leases providing that the lessee shall forfeit a sum or suffer a consequence for breach of a specified term. Such clauses occupy ambiguous legal territory: courts have examined whether they operate as genuine liquidated damages or as penalties, a distinction that carries significant doctrinal consequences.
In nomine. "In the name of." Used to describe actions taken under the authority, designation, or title of another — as in acting in the name of a principal, a sovereign, or a legal entity.
Why It Matters in Research
Nomine is not a freestanding substantive term but a building block of Latin legal vocabulary. Researchers encountering it in historical sources should treat it as a pointer to the compound phrase in which it appears, not as an independent doctrine. The substantive work is done by the noun following it.
The nomine poenae formulation is the most legally consequential usage and the one most likely to surface in historical equity and contract research. In civil law sources, nomine poenae legacies implicated the question of whether courts would enforce conditional testamentary gifts designed primarily to punish rather than benefit. In English common law and equity sources, the term was absorbed into the broader penalty/liquidated damages debate — a body of doctrine with continuous practical relevance. A researcher tracing the history of penalty clauses in English lease covenants will encounter nomine poenae as a period label for what modern courts call a penalty clause or forfeiture provision.
The phrase also appears in ecclesiastical and canon law contexts, as well as in older pleading forms where designating the capacity in which a party acts — in his own name, in the name of a corporation, in the name of the Crown — carried procedural significance. Latin pleading forms using nomine were common before code pleading displaced them.
Because nomine is purely a Latin preposition in legal dress, it will not appear in modern statutory or regulatory text except in scholarly quotation or historical reproduction. Its presence in a source is itself a dating signal: materials using the term unselfconsciously are likely pre-twentieth century, drawn from civil law, or reproducing older authorities.
Historical Dictionary Support
Both editions of Black's agree on the core translation — "by name; by the name of; under the name or designation of" — without divergence. The first edition goes further by defining nomine poenae with a direct citation to Justinian's Institutes (Inst. 2, 20, 36), grounding the civil law usage and extending the entry to note the term's adoption in English lease covenant practice. The second edition strips the entry to the bare translation, omitting the compound phrase and the English application entirely.
This compression between editions is itself informative: it reflects Black's second edition tightening entries that had expanded into doctrinal illustration. Researchers relying solely on the later edition would miss the nomine poenae application and the civil law source. Neither edition attempts a full treatment of the penalty clause doctrine the term underlies; for that, treatise sources and equity reports are the appropriate next step.
No independent entry for nomine appears in Bouvier's Law Dictionary or Burrill's Law Dictionary under this heading, though both address poenae and penalty in their own entries.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Contracts & Commercial Law Encyclopedia: Contracts — Adequacy of Consideration and Nominal Consideration; Remedies — Nominal Damages
The Law Mind Torts & Personal Injury Encyclopedia: Damages and Remedies in Tort — Nominal Damages in Tort