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Thread: I.M.

  1. #1
    oxon57
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    Default I.M.

    I am ashamed to say that this came from my supposedly well-educated nephew, regarding three obituaries that he had come across:
    "...I think they were all written by someone in the family, because although they don't give an actual name, they all have the same initials at the end - I.M. I can't work out who that might be though."

    I have suggested that he spends today trawling the GRO index, looking up the surname "Memoriam", to see if he can find an entry for someone with the first name of "In".

  2. #2
    pipsqueak
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    Default

    Should I confess that I didn't know that either? I suppose I haven't read enough obituaries to have seen IM written at the end.

  3. #3
    Name well known on Brit-Gen
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    Default

    Is it a Latin for "IN Death" or such.?

    Wendy

  4. #4
    oxon57
    Guest

    Default

    "In memoriam", which "I.M." stands for, is indeed Latin, from memoria (memory) - basically "In memory of".

    Of course, if you didn't do Latin at school and/or your family are like my direct line, where the best you can hope for is a one-liner in the local paper, not a proper obituary, you may well not have come across "In memoriam", let alone the abbreviation, and it may leave you scratching your head when you eventually do, which is why I thought it was worth posting!

    However, when (as my nephew does) you have a mother who married money, you went to one of the most expensive public schools in the country then on to university, and you are researching a family whose births, marriages and deaths are so well recorded that you don't spend money on certificates, you just look in The Times etc., Who's Who, etc., with obituaries being two-a-penny, well - you'd think he'd know, wouldn't you?

  5. #5
    pipsqueak
    Guest

    Default

    In that case, yes you would!

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