Handwriting and language

Much of this guide has been concerned with records that are available in print, for which legibility should obviously not be a problem. But most genealogists at some time will want to look at the records themselves, whether in the original or on microfilm. It's also likely that more images of documents will become available on the internet - large-scale projects to digitise census returns are already under way, both in America and Britain*, and the trend will undoubtedly continue, and embrace older records as well.
[*Unfortunately, the British census project currently - January 2001 - looks like an object lesson in how not to put genealogical data on the Internet!]

For some documents, vocabulary may also present difficulties, and these get worse as the documents get older - for most Britons and Americans, English itself becomes a foreign language at some point in the 15th century. In itself, this is not too serious a problem, because comparatively few records this old are likely to be written in English - most are in Latin, and a few in French. Further problems arise because - particularly in legal documents - the Latin is often highly abbreviated. This is the reason that early printed editions of medieval records used a special record type to reproduce the notation of the documents. So at worst, the reader has to contend with unfamiliar handwriting, a foreign language and drastic abbreviations.

This can be very discouraging, and is probably enough to discourage many people from even trying. But there are several things to remember:

• Medieval people - even the clerics - weren't any cleverer than their modern-day counterparts. The people who had to read the documents then differ from those who want to read them now only, essentially, in having had more practice.
• Handwriting in official medieval records is usually fairly carefully done. This means that - with a little practice - a medieval document in good condition can be easier to decipher than many later documents. (Personally, I think the hardest handwriting the genealogist has to deal with is the often sloppy scrawl of the Victorian census return or parish register.)
• Most of the medieval documents used by genealogists follow more or less rigid formulae - and of course, this is the reason why it was often possible to abbreviate them so drastically. With the help of transcripts of a few examples of the type of document in question, the reader can narrow down the possibilities for an illegible word or phrase - often there will be only one realistic candidate. Another useful trick is to use a good search engine to look for transcripts of similar documents on the Internet - with luck, it's possible to find an example of exactly the same phrase.

The lists below include a variety of useful reference material - some online and some printed - for dealing with the problems of handwriting and language.

Links and bibliography for handwriting and language

Contents:

• English vocabulary
• English handwriting
• Latin vocabulary
• Latin handwriting
• French vocabulary

English vocabulary

A useful online resource is the internet mailing list OLD-ENGLISH-L (Judith Werner), 'for people trying to decipher or interpret old written sources' in English. The emphasis is on queries about English vocabulary in the early modern period (or later).

Another excellent resource for early modern English vocabulary is Ian Lancashire's Lexicons of Early Modern English (University of Toronto), based on 160 dictionaries and similar works from 1480-1702.

This recently published work deals with some 3,400 medieval terms and phrases:

• Christopher Corèdon and Ann Williams, A Dictionary of Medieval Terms and Phrases (2004)

There are also some good online glossaries of medieval terms. (Encyclopedias, dictionaries and some other glossaries are listed on the links page.)

• NetSERF's Hypertext Medieval Glossary
  Covers more than 1400 terms, with hyperlinked cross-references and bibliography
• Guide to Medieval Terms (J.S. Arkenberg, California State University)
  A glossary of towards 1000 medieval terms, with an international flavour - as well as Western terms, it includes many from the Islamic world
• Glossary of Obscure Terms (The Records of Earls Colne, Cambridge University)
  Glossary of more than 300 archaic terms
• Glossary of Medieval Terms (Michael Adams/Brendan McManus) [formerly at http://cal.bemidji.msus.edu/History/mcmanus/ma_gloss.html; unavailable 4 November 2007; see the Internet Archive's copy of this page, from October 2004]
  A glossary of around 300 international medieval terms
• Medieval English Towns - Glossary (Stephen Alsford)
  Detailed discussion of about 50 medieval terms
• Scotland - a glossary of archaic words and phrases... (Peter Garwood)
  Not English and not exclusively medieval, but a very extensive collection of archaic Scottish terms useful for genealogical research
• The Domesday data and terminology section of the Online help manual for Phillimore's Domesday Explorer product contains detailed information on many medieval terms, including weights and measures. The section is arranged by subject area, but there is also an alphabetical index (which includes terminology related to the product, as well as that related to Domesday itself)
• Dictionary of Genealogy & Archaic Terms (Randy Jones, The Genealogy And Family History Home Page)
  An extensive dictionary of genealogically relevant words, based originally on a list by Dick Eastman, including many useful for medieval research

For Anglo-Saxon vocabulary, there are two online versions of An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (1898) by Joseph Bosworth and T. Northcote Toller:

• Germanic Lexicon Project (University of Pennsylvania)
  Page images in TIFF format and OCR text (checking in progress); includes the supplement of 1921
• Research in Computing for Humanities (University of Kentucky)
  Page images in JPG format

English handwriting

As well as discussing archaic vocabulary, Judith Werner's OLD-ENGLISH-L internet mailing list maintains a web page where images of documents can be displayed, if help is needed with difficult words or phrases.

Old Law Hands and Court Hand - plates originally published in Andrew Wright's Court Hand Restored (1776) - are available online (Judith Werner, OLD-ENGLISH-L). These alphabets contain several examples of each letter, in late medieval/early modern script.

Other excellent online resources are:

• Early Handwriting 1500-1700 - an online course (Cambridge English Renaissance Electronic Service)
  Includes a series of graded lessons, with further images and transcripts of documents, sample alphabets, notes on abbreviations, dating and transcription conventions, and a bibliography
• Early Modern Palaeography (David Postles, Leicester University)
  Another online course, including bibliography, a sixteenth century alphabet, sample texts and examples of contractions (abbreviations)
• Palaeography: reading old handwriting, 1500 - 1800: A practical online tutorial (National Archives/University College London)
  Includes some useful reference material, including information on abbreviations, dates, money, weights and measures; with links to examples of documents for practice, and a bibliography

There are also several useful published works:

• W.S.B. Buck, Examples of handwriting, 1550-1650 (London, 1973)
• H.E.P. Grieve, Examples of English Handwriting 1150-1750 (Chelmsford, 1954)
• L. Munby, Reading Tudor and Stuart handwriting (Chichester, 1988)
• J.F. Preston and L. Yeandle, English handwriting 1400-1650: an introductory manual (Asheville [North Carolina], 1999)

Latin vocabulary

Many online Latin dictionaries are available; selections are listed at Dictionary.com, and yourdictionary.com. Apparently most of the online dictionaries have something of a classical bias, but the following include useful medieval Latin content:

• Latin Word List (Lynn Nelson, University of Kansas)
  • Latin Word List
    See the Internet Archive's copy of this page, from April 2003
  • Latin-English Dictionary (Tze-wan Kwan, Chinese University of Hong Kong)
    Searchable version, based on the word list
• Glossary of Latin Words Found in Records and Other English Manuscripts, But Not Occurring in Classical Authors (White Trash Scriptorium)
  From Charles T. Martin, The Record Interpreter (1911)
• Latin Dictionary (Babylon)

There is also a commercial site, The Latin Translator, which offers "fast and inexpensive translations between Latin and English" through the Internet.

Of course, there are many Latin dictionaries in print. The following apply specifically to the medieval period:

• Dictionary of medieval Latin from British sources (multiple volumes; London, 1975 onwards; in progress)
  9 fascicules published so far, covering A-Pel.
• R.E. Latham, Revised medieval Latin word-list from British and Irish sources (first published London, 1965; most recent edition 1989)
• J.F. Niermeyer, Mediae latinitatis lexicon minus ... a medieval Latin French/English dictionary (2 vols; Leiden, 1976)

There are also some briefer guides and dictionaries, prepared for family and local historians:

• E.A. Gooder, Latin for local history: an introduction (first published London, 1961; most recent edn 1978)
• E. McLaughlin, Simple Latin for family historians (c.1988)
• J. Morris, A Latin glossary for family and local historians (Birmingham, 1989)
• D. Stuart, Latin for local and family historians : a beginner's guide (Chichester, 1995)

Latin handwriting

The following online resources deal primarily with documents written in Latin:

• Medieval Paleography: An Introductory Course (David Postles, Leicester University)
  An excellent online course, including parallel Latin and English texts, hypertext versions with commentaries on individual clauses, images of original charters, bibliography and reference material on language and chronology
• An illustrated extract from L.C. Hector's The Handwriting of English Documents (1958) discusses Methods of Abbreviation in English documents employing Latin
• Medieval Writing - History, Heritage and Data Source (Drs John and Dianne Tillotson)
  These pages contain a set of interactive exercises (mainly Latin, but with some English documents), together with background material, a glossary, a bibliography and some useful links

There are also some useful collections of images of medieval documents online:

• A selection of medieval documents (Durham University)
  Includes images of nearly a hundred documents from the cathedral muniments, designed to illustrate the types produced by a large medieval monastery. In many cases there is also a commentary and/or transcript
• Yorkshire Archaeological Society - Manuscripts
  A small collection of images of documents, from the 13th-15th centuries, in the archives of the Society

Some useful published works are

• C.T. Martin, The Record Interpreter: a collection of abbreviations, Latin words and names used in English historical manuscripts and records (2nd edn; London, 1910; reprinted Chichester, 1982)
• D. Stuart, Manorial records: an introduction to their transcription and translation (Chichester, 1992)

French vocabulary

This comprehensive resource is available online:

• The Anglo-Norman Dictionary (The Anglo-Norman On-Line Hub)
  Dictionary of the French language as used in medieval England. Letters G-Z are from the first edition of the dictionary (1977-1992); A-E are from the second edition (2000-2006); F is an unpublished revision (and similar revisions will be added for G and H).