What is the French equivalent of the Latin name "Jacobi"?
We think it is Jacques, based on a later 1850 death record, but want to make sure.
Answers
-
Yes, that is correct.
0 -
While Jacques is the correct translation of Jacobi, the form of Jacobi is mostly used when this is the second or third names (before the family (or last) name. This appears most of the time in the parish records of the Roman Catholic church, where the records were in Latin. Jocobi is a form of Jacobus.
It is my opinion that names should not be translated. I believe the names, as the are recorded in the birth record should be used.
For example: the first name of an individual can be Jacobus on his birth record in the 18th century (parish baptisme record), is married as Jacques in the early 19th century (civil registration during the French republican era) and died as Jacobus in the Dutch speaking part of Belgium civil registration. All this first names are of the same person, which may create confusion. So be very careful!
0 -
U heeft een hoog niveau van expertise, Gilbert.Uw engels is ook foutloos.
Ik moet uw standpunt bijtreden,Ik heb mijn achternaam gevonden als Kintziger,Kuntziger,Kenzeg,allemaal binnen dezelfde familie; afhankelijk van de periode en de overheersende macht van dat moment.Ook maakt het verschil van streek tot streek, en land tot land.
Adrien
0 -
I agree wholeheartedly that names should not be translated haphazardly into any language we want, and your heads-up that the name may be listed in multiple languages in different records is extremely important! There are many instances in which the name was recorded as its Latin version in a Latin-language record because that was the official language of administration, even though the person was French and went by Jacques (or was German and went by Jakob). In these cases, the name should be translated into the version the person most likely went by in real life--not the version we would use in our own country today, but the version he himself would've used.
0 -
A great resource for translating given names from one language into another is http://namepedia.org/en/firstname/translate
0 -
Thank you all so much for all the advice! I will consider this as I continue my Belgium research.
Just to be clear though, I never asked for the translation of Jacobi, I simply asked for the French equivalent. Nothing to do with translating names, nor anything to do with discarding the birth name for a different name. I wanted to keep the question brief, so I didn’t include all the information behind the question, since no one wants me to write an essay.
So here is my shortened essay:
I have been working on a couple that has almost exactly the same names as another couple in the same parish. They were entered in Family Search with specific dates, but no sources. We found all the sources for them, birth, marriage and death, and had to start sorting out who was who.
Couple A was Jacques Joseph Vilain and Marie Joseph Cornil and Couple B was Jean Joseph Vilain and Marie Joseph Cornil based on a marriage record in Ransart, Hainaut, Belgium in 1776 (couple A) and in 1778 (couple
. Each couple is recorded with their children, and low and behold, both couples named their first child Marie Joseph Verset, because why not? 
The problem was that I needed to find parents for each couple and verify that the ones listed on Family Search were correct. Since the birth records would help prove or disprove this, I went back to the older Latin records, which don’t give much information. There was only one that matched the Jacques of couple A, but the Latin name was given as Jacobi Josephum Verset, or something along those lines.
I only wanted to verify that Jacobi is Jacques, because if it was some other name, like James, for example, (which is funny because technically all James listed in the New Testament were Jacobs, but the Vulgate translation rendered it different, then they went with the French name of Gemmes, then voila James) I would have to keep looking elsewhere for the birth of my Jacques. I was able to sort out all the problems, and wrote an 11 page essay on my conclusions if any of you are up for a big read, haha
. Thank you all, once again. If I ever encounter another problem like this, I know who I can ask!
0 -
But you really should publish your essay,a good read is hard to find,and we like to read things like that.Give us some mighty strokes of your keyboard-brush!..
0
