What happened in history to show such old fashioned spelling mixed with modern ones?
I have traced a paternal line back to the 1600’s. Francis Baudison married Dorothy Wasse in 1671 in Braithwell, Yorkshire. But when I go to his father, the names change to old style language…his father is Franciscus Baudison, died 1698 and the mother is Margareta Bawdison, died 1699. John becomes Johannes, William becomes Gulielmus, etc., but it is not the case for other names like Elizabeth Arnold which follows Margaret. These records are typed, so definitely completed recently. What happened in history to show such old fashioned spellings mixed with modern ones?
Answers
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The recordkeeping switched from Latin (Franciscus, Margareta, Johannes, etc.) to English (Francis, Margaret, John, etc.).
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Thank you. Do you know what year that was?
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It wasn't a single event or time. There are English-language records from centuries earlier than Latin-language records from a different context. (Legal records had different traditions than ecclesiastical ones, for example.) Sometimes the identity of the clerk made all the difference: if the vicar retired and a new hotshot Latin-scholar-wannabe took over, the language could switch from English to Latin for a generation, or until the bishop complained, whichever came first.
You mentioned typewritten records, which brings up another aspect: many transcriptions silently translated and normalized names. For example, some transcribers would always write "John", regardless of whether the original said Joannes, Johannes, Jn~, or John. Other transcriptions tried to stick closer to the original, but one needs to check the headmatter and contents carefully to figure out what practices were followed.
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