Records with wrong names
It looks like some people transcribing records don't understand how languages other than English work. If the original records are in Latin, the person transcribing it needs to have a basic understanding of how Latin works. For example there is an original record in Latin saying "Skafar Joannes filius Martini Skafar et Mariae Gerics agricolae". This means in English "Joannes Skafar, son of Martin Skafar and Maria Gerics, peasants". The original words "Martini" and "Mariae" means "of Martin" and "of Maria". These are really very basic things that everyone should know. Annoyingly, I am asked to attach records where the names are Martini and Mariae instead of Martin and Maria. This is so ridiculous and very unprofessional.
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@DamienMarsic I appreciate your explanation of Latin in genealogical context. I did not understand what the words actually meant, but when adding to the tree from Italian church records have always used the Italian spelling for names.
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It's not a matter of spelling, it's a matter of inflection / declension. The name MARTIN is always spelled MARTIN. MARTINI is not a name, it's an expression that means "of Martin". The name is MARTIN and is spelled MARTIN. When reading the record you need to understand that "filius Martini" means exactly "son of Martin" and nothing else. The name is Martin and is spelled Martin, not Martini. It's like you take an English record that says "son of Martin" and you transcribe the record using "of Martin" as the name. You obviously understand that "of" is not part of the name, it just shows the relationship between son and Martin. In Latin it's the same, you need to understand that the i at the end is not part of the name, it's just shows the relationship between son and Martin. So, all records that copied inflected names are WRONG and need to be corrected. I am not going to accept a record that says MARTINI when the name is MARTIN.
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Having said that, we have enough problems trying to get people to index what is there, as it stands, without requiring people to translate (Church) Latin into English. Such Latin appears in 20th century Roman Catholic registers in England and if you're indexing (or rather, validating OCR AI produced files) parish registers from England, I'm confident that there's no stated requirement to understand Latin. I suspect that there will be many more who can't understand it, than can.
On that basis, I'd rather the researcher into the relevant family do the translation because they're more likely to have experience of RC registers than an "indexer" will. Bear in mind also that new registers will be initially processed by OCR and AI and I don't think that there's a translation step in that process - yet.
The researchers need to understand that Martini's correct name is Martin and this should indeed be entered on the profile of the person concerned. (With Latin names declined appropriately as Alternative Names?) That requirement does tend to militate against the "drive by genealogy" that some indulge in where they input one register entry and then never see the family again. This does not help them to understand Latin usage. That end of the process definitely needs attention.... Not so much the indexing end, I believe.
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