Hi Barbara There are two important things here. In the example you quote here you use "nunc:" - the colon (:) at this time would indicate an abbreviation, so the word would not be "nunc" on its own, as obviously no abbreviation involved there. So the meaning is not now or present... >From the example given of the twins it would seem that it has been used to indicate a child which has not been baptised. The burial service was not supposed to be read for anyone (child or adult) who had not been baptised, and as the register is meant to be a register of services, many children buried in the churchyard before they are baptised go unrecorded. However in this case it seems that your chap was being far more assidous, and recording all the bodies buried, whether or not the service was read for them. You mention abortive - well obviously they could not have been baptised as they would have been born dead, and the same goes for still births. Here it would seem that the term is being used to indicate that the child was unbaptised, but quite how is interesting, as "nuncupative" seems more to mean "named" than the opposite... Polly ----- Original Message ----- From: "Barbara Youds" <barbara.youds@ntlworld.com> To: <OLD-ENGLISH@rootsweb.com> Sent: Tuesday, December 30, 2008 7:01 AM Subject: [OEL] re Nunc child Dear All, Thanks for all your thoughts on this. I should have mentioned that the time frame is c. 1620 and the incumbent used a mixture of Latin and English, and as far as I can tell (who has no Latin at all) not very well! We are fairly certain that the meaning will be now or declared child and at first thought it must mean declared as in a declaration of paternity made by the mother of an illegitimate child as other entries use the term base for illegitimate children. However.... (why is there always an 'however'?) I then found these entries: 22nd Oct - A child nunc: et alter ex gemell: Jacobi Scholefield 25th Oct - Josephe s. Of James Scholefield alter ex gemellis Joseph was baptised on the 22nd, possibly at the same time his twin was buried. So it would appear that James Scholefield was the father of twins, one of whom died before it was baptised. I wonder if this particular incumbent used the term nunc child for those children who died before baptism, that is 'declared' but not yet named before God? In other words these children were all non-viable for some reason, perhaps late miscarriages or still births rather than illegitimate? The reason I would like to know is that I am looking at a mortality crisis and the term abortive is given for many burials indicating possibly the effects of a famine and I need to be able to assign these nunc entries to a particular category of burial in order to come up with a set of stats to manipulate. Thank you all again, Barbara ==================================== WEB PAGE: http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~oel/ ARCHIVES: http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/index?list=OLD-ENGLISH ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to OLD-ENGLISH-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message