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LATIN: TITLES INDICATIVE OF SOCIAL STATUS

Polish vital records often contained titles or terms that indicate the social status or rank of the individuals mentioned in them. In many cases, the status described has no real equivalent in English, as the concepts described are foreign to American contemporary culture. In such cases the literal English meaning, or the closest rough equivalent, of the title is provided and the full "flavor" of the expression is somewhat diluted.

Terms for Nobles and the Clergy

The following are all adjectives, declined either like magnus (those ending in -us) or like fortis (those ending in -is).

(Many thanks to Rafal T. Prinke, whose book Poradnik Genealogi-Amatora was the source for much of the following information).

Terms for Commoners

MONTHS OF THE YEAR

The names of the months are actually considered adjectives modifying the unexpressed noun mensis, month. Those ending in -us are declined like nouns of the Second Declension, so that the genitive singular ends in -i, the ablative in -o. Aprilis, September, October, November and December are declined like nouns of the Third Declension, with the genitive singular in -is, ablative in -i. Observant readers may note that September, October, etc. should mean "seventh month, eighth month," and so on. In ancient Rome the year was reckoned as beginning with March, so that under that system September was the seventh month, October the eighth, etc. When the calendar was changed the months kept their original days. This makes the abbreviations 7bris, 8bris very confusing, because we would expect them to refer to July and August, when in fact they refer to September and October. When you see these abbreviations, it helps to replace the numeral with the Roman name, i. e., 7 = septem, which reminds us that 7bris refers to September.

DAYS OF THE WEEK

There were several different names for days of the week, using either dies (day) and the name of a god, or feria plus a simple ordinal:

RENDERING OF DATES

Dates are usually given in Latin by rendering the year and day in the ablative case, and the month in the genitive, according to the pattern "[in] the -th year, [on] the -th day of the month of -." Often the priests or clerks, having no great desire to torture themselves, would simply write the name down in numerical form, which we can read easily. But many forms mandated that the date be written out in full. Consider this date:

Anno Domini millesimo octingentesimo quinquagesimo primo, die decimo septimo Octobris

It is certainly a mouthful! But you may actually see dates given this way, so it is wise to be familiar with the pattern. 

First, anno is the ablative singular of annus, year, and "Anno Domini'; ("in the year of [Our] Lord") is a familiar expression, so at least you know right away that what follows is the year something happened. Reference to the dictionary and a quick review of the ablative endings tell us millesimo is the term for "thousand," octingentesimo means "eight hundred," quinquagesimo means "fiftieth," and primo means "first." So this happened in the one thousand eight hundred fifty-first year of Our Lord: 1851. 

Then we note that die is the ablative singular of the Fifth Declension noun dies, "day," so now we proceed to decipher the month and day. Reference to a dictionary tells us that decimo septimo is an ablative form of the expression meaning "seventeenth." Octobris is genitive of October; in some cases we might see the word mensis, "month," preceding Octobris, but it isn't really necessary and in either case we understand what is being said. With this information we state confidently that the date was " 17 October 1851.

GENERAL LATIN VOCABULARY & ABBREVIATIONS

Terms marked with an asterisk* are ones that tend to appear a lot and can be hard to find in standard dictionaries. In my opinion, they deserve a little extra attention.

GENERAL GERMAN VOCABULARY & ABBREVIATIONS

 

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