Latin Question

The Caroline mentioned in that one is Great Britain Queen Caroline, wife of George II

This isn't an abbreviation, but shows usage of BRITANNIAE. This is on a medal by Jean Dassier:

NUMISMATA REGUM ANGLIAE A GUIELMO PRIMO AD HAEC USQUE TEMPORA GEORGIO II MAGNAE BRITANNIAE FRANCIAE ET HIBERNIAE REGI SERENISSIMO ETC DICATA A JOANNE DASSIER GENEVENSIS REIPUB CAELATORE MONETALI ANNO M DCC XXXI ","NUMISMATA REGUM ANGLIAE A GUIELMO PRIMO AD HAEC USQUE TEMPORA GEORGIO II MAGNAE BRITANNIAE FRANCIAE ET HIBERNIAE REGI SERENISSIMO ETC DICATA A JOANNE DASSIER GENEVENSIS REIPUB CAELATORE MONETALI ANNO M DCC XXXI

(Medals of the Kings of England from William I to these very times, dedicated to George II, the most serene king of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, etc., by Jean Dassier, engraver of coins to the Republic of Geneva, 1731)

I'd say he pluralized them, kinda like algae.






Medals - absolutely!

People - not so much. Although I always had a thing for Geo III. What a handsome dude!

No. I'm by no means a Latin scholar, but what seems to be happening here is a difference in grammatical interpretation.

In English, we use prepositions such as "by", "for", "to", "with", "of" and so forth to indicate the grammatical case the surrounding words should be interpreted with. Latin uses word suffixes to serve much the same function. This means that word order in Latin is much less relevant to determining meaning than it is in English.

Look at the English translation of the Latin on the Dassier medal:


King George II is the passive recipient of the dedication of the medals - this is in the Dative case. If you compare word for word, there is no word corresponding to "dedicated to" in the Latin itself; "dedicated to" is transmitted simply by the use of Dative case. The giveaway is George's name itself: "GEORGIO" instead of the more familiar "GEORGIUS". Collectors of ancient Roman coins know this case well, seeing it on posthumous memorial coins such as those to "DIVO CLAUDIO" - "dedicated to the divine Claudius".

On coins, the King (or queen) is named as being ruler of such and such a place - the ruler's name is therefore in the Nominative case which for males has the "-US" ending and for females the "-A" ending.

The possessions owned by the monarch, however, are in the Genitive case, both on the medal and on the coins. The "-AE" ending is female genitive singular and is the form the abbreviated Latinized names of countries should almost always be expanded out to, while the "-ARUM" ending is female genitive plural. "BRITANNIARUM REX" therefore means "king of the Britains". Presumably the logic was that wherever British colonists lived was a "Britain", or at least a piece of one, therefore the plural could apply to indicate the British Empire as a whole. We also see this same case on Spanish coins: HISPANIARUM ET INDIARUM REX means "King of the Spains and the Indias".

For far more information on this subject than you or I really need to know, see Wikipedia. Read it, then be thankful that Latin is no longer a necessary part of a typical educational syllabus. Otherwise you'd have had to learn all this junk in school.

No kidding - I printed that out for my son (he's taking it, and can't quite wrap his brain around it yet).

The difference between -AE and the -ARUM make sense, but what about when you just see BRITANNIAR? Is that an abbreviation and should be expanded to BRITANNIARUM?

so.. the abbreviation

B, BR, BRI, BRIT, BRITT, etc

Would be any of BRITANNIAE, BRITANNIARUM, BRITANICUS ?

BRITANNIAE = Britain (Great Britain)
BRITANNIARUM = all the Britains [Great Britain + territories] (Great Britain)
BRITANICUS = Conqueror of the Britons (Ancient Rome)

(assuming BRITANNIAR isn't among those?)

thanks Sap!

Yes. When you see just "B", "BR", or some other heavily abbreviated form of the word, you can assume "BRITANNIAE" is the proper expansion of the abbreviation, unless there's something else in the legend that might make you think otherwise. As an example, "BR.OMN" which is seen on later coins would be plural, BRITANNIARUM OMNIUM, "of all of the Britains", since mixing singular and plural "of all of Britain" makes less sense, especially when they were trying to communicate they owned a vast empire and not just one dinky little island in the Atlantic.


"Britannicus" would be someone's name; they would simply be named after the country in question. The modern equivalent might be naming a child "Dallas". The use of the name would imply that the person (or their parents who gave them the name) were involved with Britain somehow (and in ancient Rome, "involvement" usually meant annexation). An emperor adding additional territory-derived names to themselves was staking a personal claim to the "involvement" in that territory and the benefits the Empire derived from that involvement.

Ah. I think I get it now.

Many of these coins have "BRITT" as the abbreviation. However, "Britannia" has only one "T". What's the explanation for this? It can't be a mint error, since it can be seen on all the smaller coins of Victoria. The answer can be found, once again, in the numismatic traditions of the Romans.

A common convention seen in the highly abbreviated legends on ancient Roman coins was to add multiples of the last letter in an abbreviated word to indicate the word is supposed to be plural. Thus, "AVGG" was plural for "AVG" (Augustus). Even "AVGGG" can be found on coins from periods when three emperors reigned jointly.

So yes, "BRITT" is supposed to be plural, short for "BRITANNIARUM". If you see just "BRIT" on a coin, it's probably supposed to be singular.