The parish records (births, marriages, christenings) for my husband's family in Croatia are mostly written in Latin, though some are written in Italian and a few in Croatian. Having taken four years of Latin in high school and two years in college, I can read some of the entries. However, my skills are rusty and I had forgotten how the endings of names can differ depending on the relationship of one person to another, and this had me confused regarding the names of my husband's ancestors. It was another mystery to be solved.
For example, many men in my husband's family are named "Anton" which is the Croatian form of Anthony. Anthony is also my husband's name and he is named after his grandfather Anton. In the records of his ancestors, however, the name is often written "Antonius," the Latin form. Occasionally the name was written in the Italian version, "Antonio." This was because the island of Brac, his ancestral homeland, was frequently under the rule of Venice, and some of the priests were Italian. However, at times, the name is written "Antoni" or even "Antonii" which puzzled me.
Then I found a website that reminded me of why the name might be spelled with one or two i's at the end. This ending signifies that the individual is the father of a previously named individual. So if I were to write my husband's name in Latin, it would simply be "Antonius." If I were to write in Latin about "Matthew, son of Anthony," it would read "Mattheus filius Antoni (or Antonii)." Since christening records and marriage records list the parents of the child to be christened or the individuals to be married, it would be common to see the father's name ending in i or ii.
So now when I see Antonii or Antoni, I realize my researcher was simply copying records exactly as the names were written in Latin, and probably didn't realize the endings represented a relationship between two individuals in the record. The actual name of the individual would be Antonius in Latin, and Anton in Croatian.
Mystery solved!
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