adoptatus

Adoptatus is a Latin term meaning "adopted" and functions as the perfect passive participle of adopto. In classical Latin usage it also served as a substantive noun to denote a person who has been legally adopted into another family, or more broadly someone holding the status of an adoptee.

In Roman law, adoption (adoptio) created a formal parent–child relationship between the adopter and the adopted person, transferring the adoptee from his birth family to the adopter's familia. The adopted person often took the nomen of the adopter’s gens and could become an heir of the adopter, while losing some legal ties to his birth lineage. The precise effects of adoption varied with time and context, but adoptions were commonly used to secure heirs, align noble houses, or reorganize family succession. The process typically involved a formal act and required the consent of relevant parties within the legal framework of the period.

Historically, adoptatus appears in legal and literary sources to identify individuals who had passed into a new family through adoption. The status had significant implications for inheritance, social standing, and genealogical records, and it played a notable role in the politics of Roman elite families.

In modern scholarship, the term survives primarily as a historical label within Latin texts. Modern civil law systems retain conceptually related forms of adoption, but the Latin vocabulary is mainly of historical and philological interest.