What does "cresimor" mean?

[faulkneralder]

I've come across two 17th century burial records for possible ancestors in Sussex England where the burial record has no first name only a surname but has the description: "a cresimor [or cresmor] of XXXX" where XXXX is the name of the father.

The context suggests it is referring to a child, perhaps the death of an unnamed baby, but when I tried to google "cresimor" or "cresmor" I get hardly any matches... a couple of other family history transcriptions that have the word but with no explanation, and some references to "cresimus" in Latin.

Can anyone tell me what this means in a 17th century British context? Thanks!

[PaulineJ]

Basically, "to spring from".

It is referring to a child of the father.
https://www.wordsense.eu/crescimus/

[arthurk]

I suspect it's connected with the term "chrisom child" (alternative spellings include chrism, crisom, chrysome etc etc). This was a child who died under the age of one month, who was buried in the baptism robes.

There are a number of thread about it here - do a search on each of those variant spellings and you should find them.

If you want to be sure, could you post a clip for others to take a look at?

[faulkneralder]

Thanks for the response Arthur.

I don't have an image from the original parish register for this. I am relying for now on a transcription from the Sussex Family History Group. The transcription is:

  FORENAME   ---     
  SURNAME   GRENIORS     
  BURIAL DATE   2-Aug     
  YEAR   1638     
  OTHER   a cresimor of Thomas Greniors     
  PLACE   Brighton     
  LOCATION   St.Nicholas 

Thanks also to Pauline. Whichever interpretation of "cresimor" is correct, it points to the same conclusion as the context which is that this was an infant mortality. Presumably "chrisom" and "cresimor" are both derivations of the Latin "crescimus" that Pauline highlighted.

[arthurk]

Presumably "chrisom" and "cresimor" are both derivations of the Latin "crescimus" that Pauline highlighted.

No - 'chrisom' is a variant of 'chrism', which is from the Greek for 'anointing' - referring to aspects of the baptism ceremony.

While looking this up in the OED, I also found the noun 'chrisomer', which will be what you have seen. I hadn't realised it was a documented word in its own right, and thought your word might be a non-standard local term. Incidentally, the OED gives many variant spellings for chrisom, including 'cresom'.

[faulkneralder]

That makes sense, thanks once again Arthur.

[clayton bradley]

Thank you for that fascinating discussion, cb