This article is part of the series “Get Familiar With German Given Names In Old German Script” where you will find similar articles about other German names, including name variations and examples out of old documents. In this article we’ll deal with old German script “Christian”.
Some of the name variations are mainly used in certain German regions so it might well be that you’ll never ever see them in your own research. But according to the “better safe than sorry” it’s not one of the worst ideas to list them all, don’t you think? Please have a look at the (incomplete) list below.
Male variations
- Carsten
- Chris, Christen, Christian
- Karsten
- Kris, Kristen, Kristian
Female variations
- Chris, Kris
- Christa, Krista
- Christel
- Christiana, Christiane, Cristiana
- Kristiana, Kristiane
- Christin, Christina, Christine, Cristina
- Kristin, Kristina, Kristine, Krystina, Krystine
- Ina, Stina, Stine, Tina, Tine
- Kerstin, Kirsten, Kyrsten
- Kiki
Interesting name website
For more and international variations of Christian resp. Christine please have a look at “Behind the name“, an incredible name website with more than 200k of names all over the world. Please also pay special attention to the very interesting internal links on the right side of their page:
- Expand Name Links
- See All Relations
- Show Family Tree
Examples of old German script: Christian and Christine
Now let’s have a look at the snippets I collected for you. Of course I don’t have a snippet for each and every possible variation but I’ll add them when I stumble over them.
Here and there you’ll notice that I meddled with the snippets. I erased all leftovers and cutoffs from other words and letters to make it easier for you to spot the single letters.
Above are the first five versions of the name “Christian”,
all from a civil register. I’ll show you step by step how to tackle down one letter after another.
We’ll concentrate on the first two snippets and their easier letters first, step by step. Grab pen and paper and start with an underscore for the capital letter which we’ll be skipping for now because it’s a mean one…
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More than halfway done… Grab yourself a tea and relax
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Heading down the home stretch…
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Now have a look at snippets three, four and five and apply the above method to those scribbles as well. See how the scribe gets lazy and simply connects the dot on the first “i” with the next letter so we can’t see an actual dot? Mean, eh?
Let’s have a look at “Christine” and “Christina”
Now compare the male name “Christian” to the female versions of “Christina” resp. “Christine”.
- As you probably can tell the first two snippets were written by the same clerk. Again there are both Latin and Kurrent letters mixed in both names. Both examples even have the same letters, just the first ends with “-ian” while the second ends with “-ina”.
- The other three snippets all show the female version “Christina” (# 3, all in Kurrent letters) resp. “Christine” (# 4, all in Latin letters, and # 5, all in Kurrent letters except for the “C”).
Try to use the above mentioned method to identify each of the letters. Don’t worry if you’re uncertain because it will get easier with time. And you have the advantage of actually knowing in advance what it is supposed to be.
More snippets with other variations are on their way, please check back now and then for new additions. Come time, come snippets…
Some of the letters are fairly easy to recognize if you’ve seen them often enough, aren’t they? Alas, some writers didn’t stick to the rules so to say, even though there actually weren’t really official, fixed rules back then. Even today, some people create their own versions of letters, don’t they? But be honest, do all of your own letters always look the same?
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