Add Latin as a language for the name ́s language
Comments
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A van Helsdingen said: This would be very practical. Even outside of Catholic church registers Latin was occasionally used in some contexts in Europe.0
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Brett said: Georg
Firstly, "Welcome" to this "FamilySearch" ( "GetStaisfaction" ) 'Feedback' Forum.
Secondly, "Official 'FamilySearch' Representatives", do monitor; and, sometimes, participate in, this Forum.
Thirdly, I am just another User/Patron, just like yourself (and, happen to be a Member of the Church).
Many Users/Patrons who regularly participate in this Forum who have a great deal of knowledge and experience with "FamilySearch", like to assist/help other Users/Patrons like yourself.
Finally, we can ALREADY add the "Latin" version of an individual's/person's Name.
You just add the "Latin" version of an individual's/person's Name as an "Alternate Name" in the "Other Information" Section.
I do it frequently; especially, with regard to "Roman Catholic" records.
Or, are you talking about "Latin" as a 'Drop Down' Language of the "Name" field in the "Vitals" Section - if so, that is NOT the place to put a "Latinized" version of an individual's/person's "Name" from 'modern' times! Unless, of course, you are talking about someone from the 'Time' of the "Roman Empire".
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Gordon Collett said: There are only 21 languages in the drop down menu of languages choices for names so that option is very limited at this point. Some of these languages give a different template for adding the name, but most do not and for those, I have no idea what use is made of the feature now or if there are plans in the future. To specify that a name is not one of those 21 but something else, such as Latin, just choose Other like this:
When just viewing the record, there is no way to see what language is designated. I do find this feature a bit if a mystery.0 -
Juli said: Yeah, it's a total mystery. I once looked up how many people in the world speak each of the languages offered as options, and the number of speakers of some languages that aren't offered (such as Hungarian), and it all makes no sense whatsoever: https://getsatisfaction.com/familysea...0
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Lundgren said: If you look at Asian languages you can see at least one purpose.
There are multiple scripts supported for those languages. You enter the same name in each of the scripts.
For a name to be searchable in a script, it must be entered in that script as there is no lossless way to convert between them.0 -
Gordon Collett said: Yes, I mentioned that in my comment. But what about for the other languages? Does this flag have a current purpose? Does it make any difference at all if one chooses English, German, or Other for a person born in Germany under the current program? Was this a programming feature that was abandoned? Or one that is still in development? Just curious!0
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David Newton said: Perhaps they're planning a fraktur, gothic script transcription for German names in the future.0
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Lundgren said: I have looked for a Swedish language as well, for obvious reasons... I just add mine as English even though they are not.
I do not know the long term plans for the field, just how this field impacts the search. (That is where I work.)0 -
David Newton said: Well they have to include runes at some point as well, so that'll help with the Swedish names!0
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Adrian Bruce said: David, you're getting very whimsical tonight! :-)0
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Ron Tanner said: This tells us how to store the name - first then last, last then first, does it have two last names, etc. We store this in order to know how to present the names in the tree and in all the other places on the site and in printouts. And as mentioned some areas may have different names such as Chinese with Hanzi and Roman. Japanese with Kanji, Kana, and Roman. In Khmer we have the last names first and the first name next. All of these cultural and automatic displays are based on the language the name is specified with. Other is treated like English.0
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Gordon Collett said: Chinese, Greek, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Mongolian, Russian, Thai, and Ukrainian all have unique templates so it is clear why they are there.
But that leaves the mystery of English, French, Indonesian, Italian, Malagasy, Portuguese, Samoan, Spanish, Swahili, Tongan, Vietnamese, and Other which all have the identical template. Why those? Why not Norwegian and the other Nordic languages? Why not Hindi? Why not Polish? Why not Tagalog? And, of course, why not Latin?0 -
David Newton said: Yep. French and English names are recorded and written in exactly the same way with the only difference being the language itself.0
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Juli said: "This tells us how to store the name - first then last, last then first" Which makes it inexplicable why Hungarian isn't a choice.0
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Tom Huber said: The only reason I would need to add a name in Latin is if it was recorded that way in some document (even on a diploma). Then I would enter it as an alternate name as an AKA. The character set is can support any special marks above characters.
If the person's records indicate he was born with a Latin name, but later used an anglicized name, then the anglicized name would be entered into the alternate name field (an an AKA).
That said, any time a person uses a different variation of a name (and it was quite common among the early Dutch and Dutch-related settlers in New Netherland) and it appears in documentation from the time period, then that variation should be entered as an AKA name with the reason statement carrying the source -- though that is an absolutely lousy place to put it. We really need to be able to source all conclusions in the Other portion of a person's record.0 -
Adrian Bruce said: If I recall correctly, Roman Catholic baptisms can have the child's name in Latin. It would appear utterly perverse to record that as the principal name, so it ought to be in an Alias name but we have to just add any justification in text, instead of tagging a source.0
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Juli said: Almost all Catholic records are in Latin. This means that the given names are all in Latin. Sometimes it's easy enough to figure out what the person was actually called: a Joannes or Johannes recorded in a Hungarian church register was almost certainly János in real life. However, sometimes there's no way to tell: did Andreas use Andor, András, or Endre? Did they enter Adalbertus as a translation of Albert or of Béla? What the heck would a Hungarian Fridericus have used in the 1700s, fifty years before the neologists invented Frigyes?
And that's just in one language. When you add bilingual or multilingual communities, it all gets even more complicated: did Rudolfus speak German (Rudolf) or Hungarian (Rezső)? Andreas could also be Ondrej or Andrej if you add Slovak to the mix, and if you get far enough north for Polish speakers, you need to add Wojciech to the Adalbertus possibilities.
In general, the further back you get, the more likely that you'll encounter someone where the Latin name is all you know, and cannot make a reasonable guess at a vernacular form. It would be very nice to be able to just enter the Latin name, and mark it as such.0 -
Adrian Bruce said: Never having dealt with RC baptisms, the possibility of ambiguous names hadn't occurred to me, but we must have it in English where Jacobus could represent either James or Jacob. So if the baptism is the first evidence of the person (and you are working in FSFT) then Jacobus needs to be put in the Vital Name to start with, and only moved to the Alias when I work out which English version was used.
In such a case, yes, it would be nice to mark the Vital Name as Latin to start with to indicate the state of research, and then provide both source and language for the later Alias.0 -
The last point is what I wanted to post, and so I first searched whether the topic was already discussed.
My question was: would it be possible to add Latin as language (yes, in the drop down list)?
Sorry, but the assumption that Latin was used only during the "Roman Empire" is pretty wrong.
- Latin is the official language of the Vatican State (which is recognized by many many countries as independent state);
- Latin is the official language of the Catholic Church and it is still used by Catholic Priests to write the baptism, marriage, death (and other) books;
- Still all the Encyclicals are written in Latin;
- There is even a Radio (in Rome, but I guess you can receive it also from other places) that transmit in Latin;
- Last but not least, maybe the strongest argument: there is even a Mickey Mouse (and other comics) edition in Latin!
To distinguish Latin as language when inserting an alternate name would also help genealogists in mapping correctly those names. The number of books (in Latin) digitalized would justify for recognizing Latin as language for genealogical researches.
E.g. Nuntius, Didacus, Aloisius, Concepta are used in the Church Books, however, the official name, as per the (italian) State and also recorded in the City Offices are Nunzio, Diego, Luigi, Concetta resp.. (the list is very long, as anyone researching in Italy knows).
(This is not a complain! - I really thank you all for the work and effort done. Without your work, I would have not been able to go back to the XVII or even XVI century for some branches of my family just sitting in front of my PC.)
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I made the same suggestion and was redirected here. What can I do to help this feature get implemented?
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Yes, Latin is one of the most frequent languages used in the earliest European church and other records.
It should never have been excluded from the language list!
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It can be argued that no language has been excluded from the list: just choose "other". After all, it's not like Latin versus English (versus any other surname-last language written in the Latin alphabet) makes any practical difference in the use of the name fields.
I do agree, however, that Latin's absence makes little sense, as it was the language of record in Catholic registers well into the 20th century, and was the official language of government in multiple places into the 19th century, so it is frequently encountered in genealogy even by people who've only gotten as far as their great-grandparents.
I wonder if part of the decision of not including Latin was based on the lack of Latin education nowadays, which leads researchers to erroneously believe that Johannis is just a variant spelling of Johannes, and that Georgii is some sort of nickname for Georgius that's common among fathers but not children.
(For completeness and/or clarification: Johannis is the genitive case of Johannes, and Georgii is the genitive case of Georgius. The genitive case is used for things that English grammar expresses using a possessive, so essentially, Johannis = Johannes's [= John's] and Georgii = Georgius's [= George's].)
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