Daily Ancestormercator
Mercator is Latin for a merchant or trader, a man who bought and sold goods; mercatoris means of the merchant.
Mercator means merchant, trader or wholesale dealer. In town parishes it marks men who lived by trade rather than by a craft.
The genitive mercatoris follows a father's name in a baptism entry. If a merchant ancestor vanishes from one parish, the towns he traded with are worth a look.
As seen in a recordLatin baptism register, Austrian town parish, 1780s
Patrinus: Dominus Antonius Bauer, mercator hujas
Sources
How to cite this page
Daily Ancestor. "mercator." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/latin/mercator. Last checked 2026-10-10.