Hi Meg, thankyou so much for your input. The letter P is on the marriage records not baptisms. The letter is clearly written as P - I have asked some well informed Irish Researchers at our local LDS FHC but they have not seen it before, although they had seen PP written as in Parish Priest. I have checked the meaning of patrini and found the following pater patris : father. patria : fatherland, one's native country, homeland patricius : a nobleman I have also googled and not found anyword which would be appropriate. Happy hunting Annette At 08:50 PM 20/09/2009 -0500, you wrote: >Annette - are you positive the letter is a very clearly written P ? >I've seen the term Sponsors abbreviated as Sp with the S written in >the old style. Such a letter looks like a letter f that extends >below the line and is stretched out. Another way is to imagine a letter > S uncurled and pulled into an amost straight line. Written closely >together with a lower case p , it can look a lot like a P that has >a very long backbone. I also have seen the word Sponsors abbreviated >SS and Ss but that would obviously not be anything like a single >letter P . Might this be the case here ? > >I Googled for a phrase likely to get me some ideas on this letter P >and found some good explanations of Catholic entries but nothing yet on >the letter P . > >http://www.movinghere.org.uk/galleries/roots/irish/irishrecords/romancatholic.htm > > >Many of the Google hits described Sponsors as being very much like >Godparents. AH !!! Maybe this is it ??? Another Google hit shows an >entry in a very short list of Abbreviations for Catholic Church Records >in a book called IRISH CHURCH RECORDS first published 1992 by Ryan G. >James, it shows : > > PATRINI -"a term occasionally used for Sponsors". > >Use this Tiny URL as the original Google link for the page is 256 >characters long : >http://tinyurl.com/ml9yax > >This URL should take you to page 122 of a document that lists the term >Patrini as I quoted above. Nothing more is described, but you can view >the page if you wish. Might this P [if its clearly a P ] be for >Patrini ???? Well, it fits nicely .... Comments welcomed. Meg >Greenwood / Oklahoma USA >======================= >Google is my friend... >--------------------------------------------- > > >------------------------------- >To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to >IRL-KILDARE-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the >quotes in the subject and the body of the message