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Translating Latin Documents Part I: Nouns and Names

© Eva Holmes

Sooner or later you'll come across vital records which were written in Latin rather than English or Italian. Personally, I'm always thankful for this. I studied Classics in college and have a much easier time reading Latin than I do Italian. Latin is also a more precise language, which is great for genealogists. By glancing at the ending of a name, you can see a person's relationship to other people mentioned in the sentence.

Let me clarify that a little. Latin words have two parts: the stem, which is the first part of the word, and the ending. We have the same thing in English in words like leav-ing. Leave is the stem and 'ing' is the ending.

The endings on Latin nouns change according to the usage of a word in a sentence. Here are three examples in English using a Latin name with the proper ending.

1. August-us has the ball. Mari-a has the ball.

In this example, Augustus is the subject of the sentence. If a word ends in 'us' or 'a', 9 times out of 10 it will be the subject of the sentence. Words such as pater, which ends in 'er' will usually be the subject of the sentence as well.

2. August-i is the son of Marc-us. Mari-ae is the daughter of Marc-us.

This is called the genitive case in Latin. You'd see this tense used when we would use the word 'of' in English. The ending for masculine nouns is 'i' and the ending for feminine singular nouns is 'ae.' This form pops up quite often in vital documents, in phrases such as 'son of,' daughter of,' or 'wife of.'

3. I love August-um. I love Mari-am.

You'll see words ending in 'um' and 'am' as often as words ending in 'us' and 'as.' A word ending in 'um', 'am', or 'em' is the direct object in the sentence.

4. They were married by August-o. I gave the bone to Brut-o. They were married by Mari-a. I gave the dog to Mari-ae.

The 'o' ending is used for both the dative and ablative cases. The dative case is used for the indirect object in a sentence, for nouns prefaced by the words 'to' or 'for'. The ablative case has a million and one uses, but will turn up most commonly in situations where we would use the word 'by' in English.

Adjectives will be in the same case as the nouns they modify (though they might not always have the same endings- it can be tricky). This makes life much easier for genealogists in the long run. If you have a list of three names with a 'mortuus' stuck somewhere in the middle, you'll know right away that the person who has died is the male subject of the sentence.