N.N. birth entries

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kencwalker
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N.N. birth entries

Post by kencwalker »

Hello awesome IG team,
This isn't specific to Italian Genealogy (although the term N.N. seems unique to Italian birth records).
I have found several ancestral family members with the name entered as N.N., and know this is a Latin abbreviation for "nomen nescio", meaning "I do not know the name". I assume this generally means the newborn did not live long enough to be named.

My question: do you enter them in your family tree?
If so, how do you enter the name, as N.N., or "nomen nescio", or something else?
And if you don't find a Atti di Morti entry, do you enter the death date the same as the birth date?

Thanks,
-Ken
Researching surnames Pedroncelli and Pilatti in Sondrio; Cantoia in Novara; Penna in Asti.
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adelfio
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Re: N.N. birth entries

Post by adelfio »

Can you leave a link to a record with N N in it

Marty
Researching Trabia, Palermo surnames Adelfio, Bondi, Butera, Scardino,Rinella, Scardamaglia

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Re: N.N. birth entries

Post by erudita74 »

Ken
I don't know if there is anything helpful to you in the link below-

http://genealogy.stackexchange.com/ques ... ed-unnamed

Erudita
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Re: N.N. birth entries

Post by kencwalker »

Erudita,
Thanks for the link. A wide variety of opinions and suggestions.

Marty, Here's 2 links to examples in the 1884 Atti di Nascita for Isolato/Madesimo.
The first is the index (several N.N. entries):
https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1 ... cat=985332

The second is a link to N.N. Pedroncelli:
https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1 ... cat=985332

-Ken
Researching surnames Pedroncelli and Pilatti in Sondrio; Cantoia in Novara; Penna in Asti.
erudita74
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Re: N.N. birth entries

Post by erudita74 »

the masculine infant in the record was the twin of the female infant, Virginia, born in the preceding act. He was born without life, so stillborn, at 2:30 P.M. on the 23rd of Oct 1883. So his date of birth and death should be one and the same. The nameless infant in record number 4, listed in the index, was also born without life. I want to add that if an infant was born without life, there would not be a separate death record for that infant. There would only be a death record if the infant was born alive and then died at a time other than the time of birth.
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Re: N.N. birth entries

Post by kencwalker »

erudita74 wrote:the masculine infant in the record was the twin of the female infant, Virginia, born in the preceding act. He was born without life, so stillborn, at 2:30 P.M. on the 23rd of Oct 1883. So his date of birth and death should be one and the same.
...if an infant was born without life, there would not be a separate death record for that infant. There would only be a death record if the infant was born alive and then died at a time other than the time of birth.
Grazie Erudita.
I have several more N.N.'s to interpret on the Cantoia side. What is the Italian for born without life?
-Ken
Researching surnames Pedroncelli and Pilatti in Sondrio; Cantoia in Novara; Penna in Asti.
AngelaGrace56
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Re: N.N. birth entries

Post by AngelaGrace56 »

Deleted as posted at the same time.
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Re: N.N. birth entries

Post by erudita74 »

"senza vita" is without life-

Ken

Look at the record-

after the letters N.N., it says "e che io riconosco essere senza vita e che e` gemello con altro cui concerne l'atto precedente"- "and that I (the I refers to the town official) recognize to be without life and who is twin with the other which or whom the preceding act concerns"

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Re: N.N. birth entries

Post by AngelaGrace56 »

:)
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Re: N.N. birth entries

Post by erudita74 »

Angela
I saw the brief post you deleted about the translation of the words "senza vita" and that you mentioned about the words "nato morto"-"born dead" also being in the margin of records sometimes. That was a good point, so I don't know why you deleted that, and yes, I have also seen records with this phrase. In all honesty, in my 19 or 20 years of researching these Italian records, I have never seen N.N. in any record or index, but all of my research has been in Southern Italian towns and in Sicily. What I did see in my one ancestral town in Matera province were records in a Part II which had the death of fetuses who were not named. I wish I still had a copy of one of those records, but I must have gotten rid of them when I was relocating. They were death records of infants who had not come to term but were delivered. The records didn't refer to them as being born dead or without life. Just that they were fetuses. I seem to recall that there was also ages for them. Very strange.
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Re: N.N. birth entries

Post by Joannsalvo »

https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1 ... cc=2051639

I have seen in birth records: ( I used google translate)
non vivo - I do not live
nato morta - born dead
nato morto - stillborn
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Re: N.N. birth entries

Post by liviomoreno »

Joannsalvo wrote:https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1 ... cc=2051639

I have seen in birth records: ( I used google translate)
non vivo, non viva - not alive
nata morta, nato morto - born dead, stillborn
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Re: N.N. birth entries

Post by Italysearcher »

Why wouldn't you register them as 'unnamed' or 'unnamed infant?
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Re: N.N. birth entries

Post by kencwalker »

I didn't realize my question would stir up so much discussion. Thanks for the feedback!
Obviously, recording of stillborns was not consistent in Italy during this time period. I've seen the N.N. designation frequently on records from Sondrio and Novara. Based on the discussion on Eurdita's link, it seems there's not a generally accepted way to handle this.
Italysearcher wrote:Why wouldn't you register them as 'unnamed' or 'unnamed infant'?
To clarify, you are responding to my original question:
kencwalker wrote:how would you enter the name in your family tree?
If so, that's an option. Initially I used "Nomen Nescio" to match what I thought the abbreviation meant in the birth record. Based on the discussion I searched again, and found this list of genealogical abbreviations and acronyms:
https://www.geni.com/projects/Abbreviat ... epted/3096

It suggests NN can be either:
-nomen nescio [Latin], name unknown, OR
-non nominatus / non nominata [Latin], not named

I like the second suggestion; "not named" (or unnamed) is more representative of the situation than "name unknown". It wouldn't matter if this was only my tree. But eventually others will stumble into this info on FamilySearch or Ancestry. Latin terms or abbreviations may be misunderstand.

Also, thanks for all the translations. The Italian in that record goes way beyond my primitive stills. I figured out this baby was Virginia's twin, and probably stillborn, or did not survive long enough to be named. You confirmed my thoughts. I'll add the terms to my word list.

-Ken
Researching surnames Pedroncelli and Pilatti in Sondrio; Cantoia in Novara; Penna in Asti.
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