From: beaurega@ireq.hydro.qc.ca (Denis Beauregard)
Subject: Re: Johannes Petrus
Organization: Institut de recherche d'Hydro-Quebec, Varennes, Canada
Date: Sun, 27 Dec 1992 17:39:17 GMT

In article <1992Dec24.154808.7684@shearson.com> brekshyn@shearson.com writes:
>In article 92Dec22095549@moses.atc.ll.mit.edu, eggertj@moses.atc.ll.mit.edu (Jim Eggert x6127 g41) writes:
>>In doing some family research in some Catholic church records, I am
>>faced with the prospect of reading lots of names in Latin.  My
>>question is, should I translate them into the vernacular?  If so, how?
>>In particular, should I write
>>     Johannes Petrus
>>     Johannes Peter
>>  or Johann Peter
>
>Hmm,  John Peter?  Nah.  John S. Bach?  Nah.  My name is Bohdan.  I don't want
>"God-Given" as my English name (same goes for "Theodoros" - gift of God).
>Or how about Mark Aurelio?  (Marcus Aurelius, great Roman emperor 161-180).
>Granted the examples are not your everyday ones but keep the past, don't
>discard it and try to "modernize" it...  My two cents worth!
>
>
>					God-Given, er, I mean, Bohdan   ;-)
>
There is a French first name which is Dieudonne, a litteral translation
of God-Given.  Isn't it strange that the word exist in your language and
mine but not in English?  Anyway, this gives a partial hint: not all names
can be translated.

BUT...  Jean is John in French.  When some Jean migrated from a French area
to an English area (i.e. from Quebec to USA), he may likely have changed
his name to avoid confusion with the female name.  Thus, all pre-migration
documents will use the Jean name and the post-migration will use John.
Another hint: it maybe usefull of keeping track of both names.  I used
to write Jean/John as the general reference (and Pierre/Peter, etc.).
Now that I plan to use the full GEDCOM standard, I will likely use the
double name for the general reference, but will append separate NAME lines
with a time period, i.e.

1 NAME Jean/John BEAUREGARD/BURGOR
1 NAME Jean BEAUREGARD
  2 DATE PRE-1876
1 NAME John BURGOR
  2 DATE FROM-1876

The display function will display the 1st name for reference.  The FULL DATA
mode will display all lines.  I am not yet sure if the index will skip the
1st NAME line, but I thing it shouldn't because in some cases the 2nd
name may have been used in one document only and be kept just to separate
data if I find later there are 2, not 1 person.

BUT...  The official language in France is French only since about 1550.
Before that, even if the parties involved were French-speaking, the documents
were in latin.  So, I have some land records of 1471 about my ancestor
"Bartelemeo Hugonis alias Jarreti" which translate to Barthelemy Hugon
dit Jarret.  The "dit" name does not exist in English.  Anyway, my point is
that the name in the original document is not the original name, like in
the latin vital records of some time period.  In this case, I would use
both name and record it that way in my database:

1 NAME Jean BEAUREGARD
1 MARR
  2 NAME Johannis BEAUREGARD
This is not a good GEDCOM format (i.e. GEDCOM attaches marriage data to
family, not to indivuduals).  But, the following is not either legal
(in GEDCOM...) because a marriage record has only a place and date:

1 MARR
  2 HUSB
    3 NAME Johannis BEAUREGARD
  2 WIFE
    3 NAME Elisabethum TETREAU

I hope this give you some hint, but I must say this a true IMHO point!

Happy new year all folks!


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