Did the Romans derive verbs from names?

Question

I know the Romans did derive verbs from nouns (laudare, finire, lucere…), but did they ever derive verbs from names? The Greeks did, for example forming homerizein (ὁμηρίζειν) from Homeros.

My understanding is that -izare, borrowed from Greek, was used (productively) in classical Latin. However, I have never seen it attached to a name in classical context.

For example, the verb latinizare is easy to understand, but would a word like this ever have been used by classical authors? (There are of course longer ways around this word, like ad linguam Latinam adaptare.) I would prefer answers from the Augustan era or earlier, but later ones are also interesting.

Answer 1

I have another entry for this exhibit that answers your question with a resounding yes.

Enter Plautus, in the Menaechmi, with three verbs derived from proper names in his prologue:

Atque hoc poetae faciunt in comoediis:
omnis res gestas esse Athenis autumant,
quo illud vobis graecum videatur magis;
ego nusquam dicam nisi ubi factum dicitur.
atque adeo hoc argumentum graecissat, tamen
non atticissat, verum sicilicissitat.

The -isso ending seems to be a Latinized (how meta of me!) version of the Greek -ιζω (-izō).

The meaning of these verbs was not immediately apparent to me, so I defer to the authority of Henry Thomas Riley's translation. Note that he inverts the order of the above two sentences:

And, in fact, this subject is a Greek one; still, it is not an Attic, but a Sicilian one. But in their Comedies the poets do this; they feign that all the business takes place at Athens, in order that it may appear the more Grecian to you. I will not tell you that this matter happened anywhere except where it is said to have happened.

He adds in a footnote the following:

Graecissat, Atticissat, Sicelissat: Perhaps these words might be more literally translated, "Graecize," "Atticize," and "Sicilicize."

Just imagine how wonderful life would be if words like "Sicilicize" were more frequently used!

Answer 2

I don’t know how far you want to stretch your definition of classical Latin, but Christianizo is used by Tertullian, and Judaizo in the Vulgata.

Answer 3

Yes, they did.

Cicero derived the verb sullaturio "to imitate or play the part of Sulla" from the name of the famous antique dictator Sulla.

Answer 4

Proving non-existence is difficult, but in my (albeit limited) experience I've never seen -izō used in Classical Latin. The first verb-forming suffix that comes to mind is -ficō, derived from fāciō, applied to an adjective; the ancestor of English -ify. Latinificāre sounds a bit better than Latinizāre (which feels too Greek to me).