A friend of the family recently died and because he was into the Classics, his mother asked me to find a Latin statement to put on the funereal program. Now, this is a two-part question.
First, what would be an approximate (and nice-sounding) translation of “You will be loved and missed, forever”?
Secondly, are there any well-known Latin quotations that have a similar idea?
Thank you all.
My deepest condolences on your loss. One idea for the translation you need:
Amaberis requierisque In perpetuum
I recently lost a friend who devoted his life to the classics. At his wake is wrote the following closing couplet from Ovid’s Amores III.9, an elegy Ovid wrote to the poet Tibullus; I thought it was appropriate:
ossa quieta, precor, tuta requiescite in urna,
et sit humus cineri non onerosa tuo!
“May your bones sleep safely in their urn, and may the earth lie light upon your ashes”
The Latin I have is rusty, but the following is, I hope, adequate.
Amabis et desiderabis in omne tempus.
“You will be loved and you will be longed for, for all time.”
Someone with better grammar than I will probably do better though.
My Latin certainly isn’t good enough to provide an accurate enough translation for a permanent inscription, but CJJ*'s suggestion seems right given the knowledge I have. I think the passive indicative future is the correct form of the verb – amaberis means ‘you will be loved’ – but Latin is complicated and it might not be. Alternatives for ‘you will be missed’ given by my Oxford dictionary are desidereris and careris (in the sense of feeling loss). It also gives ‘in aeternum’ instead of ‘in perpetuum’, but I think both are probably adequate.
Because of the nature of the inscription, I’d suggest that you contact a classicist at a nearby university or a Latinist with a reliable, professional webpage to check the suggestions from here and perhaps to get an alternative translation or an appropriate classical quotation. (By no means am I suggesting that the suggestions you’ve gotten and will get here are wrong, but I think it’d be good to get a different opinion, as Latin has all sorts of obscure rules that even someone with good Latin might overlook.)
I’d also suggest that you look into the most appropriate way to write the inscription, and ensure that the person making the inscription is aware of it and, of course, that your friend’s family finds it appropriate. For example, should it be written with macrons (bars over long vowels, which sometimes are necessary to distinguish between different forms of a word)? Should it be written in mixed case, or should it be written in Roman fashion with all capital letters and the letter V used for both U and V?
Should have remembered a very famous Latin verse; Catullus’ elegy 101 at his brother’s grave closes:
Accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu,
atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale.
Accept these things (funeral offerings) trickling with many brotherly tears,
and forever, brother, hail and farewell.
Thank you. I’ll make sure to find and talk to a Latin professor at the university that we both attended before I make any decision.
We’ll probably anglicise the Latin, for a number of reasons. First, the family wants it simple–he wasn’t a flashy man. Secondly, few people there will know Latin, since he was the only real Latinist in his group of friends. It might sound like a careless treatment of language, but we’ll see what we need.
Please keep the suggestions coming!
Roches’ suggestion is a good one; you don’t know me from Adamus, and I did have an embarassing typo in my original suggestion (should be Amaberis requirerisque in perpetuum) :smack: .
Also, translating into any language is as much art as science, and good translations depend on a breadth of reading (not much conversational Latin these days). A variety of opinion is therefore a good thing.
Regarding other suggestions for requireris in this thread, careberis is one I would avoid, since there is a deponent form careor which means the same as the active careo (i.e. the passive could be mistaken for active). Desidereris is a fair alternative, though I personally think it is too close a synonym to amaberis. Regarding any inscription, macrons should certainly not be included; these are for 1st and 2nd year Latin textbooks only to help beginners wade thru ambiguities. U vs. V is a personal choice.