German Naming Conventions during the Napoleonic Era

Question

From about 1798 until 1814 the civil birth certificates on the left side of river Rhine that were under French administration were kept in French, and the first names of those born were also recorded in French (although Pierre in his everyday life of course run by Peter and Benoit was always called Benedikt). I could not find a convention for this problem and wonder which name to put in the First Name Field - should I do as with the Latin entries in church registers, where the convention according to the Germany Project Pages on German names is to enter the usual German name (Heinrich for Henricus etc.)? That would at least seem logical to me ...

Thank you in advance for any help and kind regards! Heike :-)

Comments

Great question!

One of my earliest genealogical successes was finding -- in the physical archives at Bad Kreuznach back in the year 2000 -- a ledger of civil marriages, written in French, that included the marriage of my emigrating ancestors.  They married during the Napoleonic period.

I remember the utter relief of being able to read the French handwriting after having encountered the early German script (at the archives in Speyer) which was effectively illegible to me.  (I spent the next several years refining my ability to decipher old German script.)

But I digress.

Answer 1

I ran into this problem with records of Zweibrücken in this period and used the German names as recorded in the church records but also indicated that the civil records were written in French, including the names and added the link to both when ever possible. The civil records were usually more valuable than the church records because they included occupations, and ages of parents and witnesses and relationships.

Comments

Hi Daniel,

that seems a good solution to me - I just did not think of that simple but sensible solution of putting it in the bio or in a remark after the excerpt that I usually give from civil certitificates. A true case of "not seeing the forrest due to all the trees" ;-)

Thanks a lot and kind regards from Heike :-)

Answer 2

I agree, I would handle it like the names written in Latin. If I only have the Latin or French version, I would take it. But if I have a clear German version, I would try to guess, which was the normal day live name. And I think, in most cases the German.