Solving the mystery of Latin records

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!

More Croatian ancestors

I just received the latest report from my researcher in Croatia and she has traced the family back to the 1700s. With the ancestors from the late 1800s she was able to access both church and census records, but by the time she reached the 1700s, all she had available were parish records, all written in Latin.  The Croatian names were hard enough to figure out, but now I have a collection of names in Latin. With my few years of Latin in Catholic school and my knowledge of a few Croatian names, I can figure out what most of them would be in Croatian and English.  For instance, "Franciscam" is Francisca or Frances.  "Dorotheam" is Dorothea or Dorothy.  "Helenam" is Helena or Helen. One was particularly puzzling, however.  The name was "Hyeronima" in Latin, and "Girolama"  in Croatian.  So I looked it up.  Hyeronima is the female version of "Hyeronimum" which means "sacred name" and is derived from the Greek.  (I guess the Roman church borrowed it.) Girolama is the Italian version, and there are many Croatian and Italian names that are the same.  The English translation for the masculine version is Jerome.

The earliest dates I now have for my husband's ancestors are in the early 1700s, though I have names that go back one more generation. My researcher told me the parish books from before that are in very bad condition, most of the information unreadable.  And the priests who recorded the information did not write down dates.

So while I do not yet have a complete record, as even though records exist they may be indiscernable, I have much more information than when I started - names and dates for four additional generations. 

Now I'm going to see what I can find for the Jescheta (Yeseta) family's ancestors in Bohemia (Czech Republic).  I have the name and email address of a researcher in that area, so maybe I'll get lucky.

Stay tuned, Terich family.