Latin Names

Cailleachdubh · 28-05-2012 9:35pm #1

I'm just wondering if anyone knows if the name John was ever recorded as Hugo in Latin church records?

Some priests had an awful penchance for translating names beyond all recognition in the 1800s.. A quick Google search revealed nothing much, other than that Hugo is Hugh (I knew that already).

Maybe I'm clutching at straws here...

ifconfig · 28-05-2012 9:42pm

Cailleachdubh wrote: »

I'm just wondering if anyone knows if the name John was ever recorded as Hugo in Latin church records?

Some priests had an awful penchance for translating names beyond all recognition in the 1800s.. A quick Google search revealed nothing much, other than that Hugo is Hugh (I knew that already).

Maybe I'm clutching at straws here...

I would be surprised if Hugo was used in place of John.
Usually the Latinised registry entries I've seen (usually Dublin RC churches in late 19th/early 20th century on Irishgenealogy.ie) are

Johannes
Joannes
Johannis

or something close in word distance to those alternatives.

I am surmising you are trying to fit an unexpected record to a lineage you are researching ??

-ifc

Cailleachdubh · 28-05-2012 9:54pm

Yes - I got it from that website. I was on a roll yesterday - one quick search and before I knew it I was viewing 6 original baptismal registers and 2 marriage register entries from the late 1800s/Early 1900s! Delighted (especially when I finally unravelled the Latin and misspelt names of the trickier ones - eg Johannes McKennedy for John Kennedy and Honoris Kehoe for Hanna Keogh).

Anyway, now I'm just being greedy and trying to find the marriage reg of the above couple but all I can find is a reference to the marriage of Hugo Kennedy and Anna King??

Ok it sounds a bit ridiculous now that I've said it.

Maybe I should just keep looking!

ifconfig · 28-05-2012 10:01pm

Ok.

If you found one for Hugo Kennedy and Anna Kehoe and the dates were a year or so set back from the oldest birth record of the children then one possibility might have been that the father was born as a Hugh but later became known as John and so the baptismal register might have recorded him as Joannes.

However, since the wife's surname is King (and not Kehoe) I suspect it is not a related record but .. you never know.
I guess it would have taken 2 coincidences.

1. The father became more commonly known as John in adult life
*and*
2. The registrar mis-transcribed the wife's surname

More likely the marriage record doesn't exist because the marriage took place in a parish not on the website/transcriptions, abroad, gap in the marriage records .. or marriage records for that parish don't go that far back and the birth records are better preserved.

—ifc

Cailleachdubh wrote: »

Yes - I got it from that website. I was on a roll yesterday - one quick search and before I knew it I was viewing 6 original baptismal registers and 2 marriage register entries from the late 1800s/Early 1900s! Delighted (especially when I finally unravelled the Latin and misspelt names of the trickier ones - eg Johannes McKennedy for John Kennedy and Honoris Kehoe for Hanna Keogh).

Anyway, now I'm just being greedy and trying to find the marriage reg of the above couple but all I can find is a reference to the marriage of Hugo Kennedy and Anna King??

Ok it sounds a bit ridiculous now that I've said it.

Maybe I should just keep looking!

Cailleachdubh · 28-05-2012 10:15pm

Wise words. Thanks for your help.

I suspect it's not the right record too, but for a while there everything I touched was turning to gold so I thought I'd get away with it.

I also thought maybe the name Keogh was mistranscribed as King for the electronic listing, but on closer inspection of the original, it is definitely King.

You seem to have some experience in this area - can I ask you, why are there so many more baptisms and marriages registered in the church records compared to burial records?

ifconfig · 28-05-2012 10:24pm

Cailleachdubh wrote: »

Wise words. Thanks for your help.

I suspect it's not the right record too, but for a while there everything I touched was turning to gold so I thought I'd get away with it.

I also thought maybe the name Keogh was mistranscribed as King for the electronic listing, but on closer inspection of the original, it is definitely King.

You seem to have some experience in this area - can I ask you, why are there so many more baptisms and marriages registered in the church records compared to burial records?

I really don't know the exact reason but it is a fact alright.
Perhaps someone else can enlighten us with a logical reason.
It is said that the COI burial records are much more plentiful than RC.
Where there are better RC burial records tends to be in the Northern counties.

http://www.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/about/aboutinfos.html

—ifc

CeannRua · 28-05-2012 10:41pm

there are matching references for John Kennedy and Anne Kehoe on FamilySearch https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/FY3R-R44

I only had a quick look so you might want to make sure there aren't others. I don't see it on IrishGenealogy but that's not to say it's not there.

Lack of RC burial records has been discussed here before - have a search.

pinkypinky · 28-05-2012 10:59pm

ifconfig wrote: »

I really don't know the exact reason but it is a fact alright.
Perhaps someone else can enlighten us with a logical reason.
It is said that the COI burial records are much more plentiful than RC.
Where there are better RC burial records tends to be in the Northern counties.

http://www.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/about/aboutinfos.html

—ifc

It's quite simple. RC church does not consider death a sacrament so didn't record burials. There's also the (not quite true) Penal law thing about Catholics not being allowed have their own cemeteries. You get RCs buried in CoI graveyards too.

CeannRua · 29-05-2012 7:22am

pinkypinky wrote: »

It's quite simple. RC church does not consider death a sacrament so didn't record burials. There's also the (not quite true) Penal law thing about Catholics not being allowed have their own cemeteries. You get RCs buried in CoI graveyards too.

I've seen this suggestion put forward before but there's something I don't understand about it. If the Catholic Church was recording the giving of sacraments why don't we have any or more records of other sacraments going back eg communion, confirmation, anointing of the sick would be handy in terms of current discussion? I'm a bit vague on the ownership of cemeteries but wonder if this may have contributed in larger part to lack of records kept by the RC clergy as well.

edit: sorry, just to be clear here. I'm not disagreeing with Pinky in case this is read this way - just asking why we don't have more of the other types of records.

pinkypinky · 29-05-2012 9:37am

I'd say that they were only recording the major sacraments - baptisms & marriages. If you think about what it would have been like for a priest during penal times, (the end of which period more or less coincides with the beginnings of most registers), he wouldn't have necessarily been based in one church but travelled around and probably relied on memory to complete registers when possible.

The ownership of cemeteries was a factor - which was why the opening of Glasnevin and Goldenbridge was such a big deal, and as you know, they kept great records right off the bat, which all the efficiency of the early Victorian era.

CeannRua · 30-05-2012 6:40am

I agree with them only recording major sacraments but, and you'd have to look at church building dates, I think a good number of parishes would have been settled in churches comparatively early. I think they could have been recording more if they wanted to. Re cemeteries, perhaps if they had owned them and been taking in money for plots we would have records.

Latin Names

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