________________________________ From: Douglas Richardson <[email protected]> Sent: 29 May 2017 22:38 > Dear Newsgroup ~ > > In the online Discovery catalogue, the archivist has indexed a record copied further below as being for Thomasina de Fornivall. This record comes from the SC class of records, which are petitions to Parliament (or the king) and is dated c.1383. This woman was the wife of John de Dagworth, Knt. [died 1360] and William de Furnival, Knt., 4th Lord Furnival [died 1383]. She has many modern descendants. > > When the original record written is checked, however, I find her given name is spelled "Thomasine" not "Thomasina." > > Here is a weblink to the original record: > > http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C9062501#imageViewerLink Petitioners: Thomasina de Fornivall (Furnival), wife of ...<http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C9062501#imageViewerLink> discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk Petitioners: Thomasina de Fornivall (Furnival), wife of William de Fornivall: Name(s): de Fornivall (Furnival), Thomasina: Addressees: King and council > > In this instance, the archivist has taken a perfectly good name in the vernacular, Thomasine, and Latinized it as Thomasina. For reasons that I do not understand, historians often wobble back and forth between English name forms and Latin name forms. > > In another petition available online involving the same woman, this woman's name is spelled "Thomesine." > > See the following weblink: > > http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C9062573#imageViewerLink > > I should note that I elsewhere find the Latin form of this woman's name as Thomasia. See for example the following record in Latin: > > Justices Itinerant, JUST 1/1486, image 1787f (available at > http://aalt.law.uh.edu/AALT4/JUST1/Just1no1486/aJUST1no1486fronts/IMG_1787.htm). > > Reviewing the above, we see that Thomasia occurs as a Latin form of this woman's name; Thomasine and Thomesine are the vernacular forms. > > Here is another example. In the online Common Pleas lawsuit index, the following entry is listed for CP 796 (Year: 1460) for a lawsuit written in Latin: > > d 1436 London debt Plaintiff: Fallan, William, clerk > Defendants: Leventhorp, Lawrence, of London, esq., Thomasina, his wife > > This woman's name is indexed as Thomasina. The woman's name is actually "Thomesiam" [Latin form] in the original record in Latin. > > This same couple is found in another Chancery lawsuit which is written in English. Here the plaintiffs are Laurence Leventhorp and "Thomasyn" his wife. The wife's name also occurs as "Thomyssyn" in the same lawsuit. > > Reference: http://aalt.law.uh.edu/AALT4/ChP/C1no25/IMG_0273.htm > > So in Latin form of this woman's name is given in one record is Thomesiam. But her name in another record written in English is Thomasyn and Thomyssyn. > > In summary, here are the vernacular forms employed for the two women in question: "Thomasine," "Thomesine," "Thomasyn," and "Thomyssyn." No Thomasina. No Thomasia. No Thomesia. > > Best always, Douglas Richardson, Salt Lake City, Utah > ------------------------------- Thank you for posting that, Douglas - it's very useful. Though I wish you had discovered it two or three years ago, when I was puzzling over this name in connection with a number of texts I was working on. I forget what the others were, but three were the 1419 ipms of Richard Hankeford (nos. 328 - 330 in volume 21 of the Calendars of IPMs), whose wife is called Thomasia in the original Latin inquisitions. In the printed calendar the name has been rendered as Thomas ('his wife Thomas', 'his mother Thomas'), a translation I was doubtful about, but I could not discover any satisfactory evidence for the contemporary vernacular form of the name. I considered Thomasine or Thomasina, but did not feel justified in deriving either of them from Thomasia. In the end I changed Thomas to Thomasia in the on-line version of the ipms - see here: http://www.inquisitionspostmortem.ac.uk/view/inquisition/21-328/330 Next time I'll plump for Thomasine. Matt Tompkins