"Latinised" names (General)

by rookancestrybest , United Kingdom, Wednesday, July 10, 2013, 20:28 (4148 days ago) @ probinson

My experience of the process of converting names from English to Latin and then from Latin back to English has led me to conclude that the record is only as good as the vicar's or priest's understanding of Latin. I have also found that the state of the handwriting of the clergyman in question is also a factor to consider. It took me five or six years to find out my great great grandfather's first name (not in a Forest of Dean Record but in another part of the country) and it was a combination of the fact that the priest's handwriting was almost indecipherable and that he used the wrong ending for the name I eventually found it out to be. They tend to get it wrong if it's not a common name like William or John.

So, even if you use a converter for the language beware! Also if a person was called by a name which could be used in English in either its Latin or one of its English forms it is never certain what the person's name actually was unless there are other records, e.g. Maria is obviously the Latin version of Mary but people in the UK can be called Mary or Maria or other variants of the name, in such a case it is impossible to know which name they were known by. Sometimes if the person comes from abroad (including Ireland) then it is even more complex trying to work out whether they would have been known by the version of the name used in the country in which they were born or its Latin version e.g. James and Seamus and John and Sean or Giovanni and John or Johann and John are an example of this!