Jean-Louis Taberd

Jean-Louis Taberd (1794–1840)^[1] was a French missionary of the Paris Foreign Missions Society, apostolic vicar of Cochinchina, and titular bishop of Isauropolis, in partibus infidelium.^[2] He edited and published the Dictionarium Anamitico-Latinum, building upon earlier efforts by Pierre Pigneau de Béhaine and Vietnamese Catholics.

Taberd's 1838 map of "Cocincina Interior" (Đàng Trong) and "Cocincina Exterior" (Đàng Ngoài)

The 1838 Dictionarium Anamitico-Latinum.

A page of Jean-Louis Taberd's 1838 Vietnamese-Latin dictionary (Dictionarium Anamitico-Latinum), based on the manuscript dictionary of Pigneau de Béhaine.

Career

Born in Saint-Étienne, Jean-Louis Taberd was ordained priest in Lyon in 1817. He joined the Paris Foreign Missions Society in 1820, and was appointed to become a missionary in Cochinchina,^[a] modern Vietnam. In 1827 he was appointed Vicar Apostolic of Cochinchina, and Bishop of the titular see of Isauropolis in 1830.^[1][2] With the persecutions of the Emperor of Vietnam Minh Mạng, Mgr Taberd was forced to escape the country.

Jean-Louis Taberd first went to Penang and then Calcutta, where, with the help of Lord Auckland and the Asiatic Society he was able to publish his own Latin-Vietnamese dictionary in 1838.^[2] He improved upon the previous works of Alexandre de Rhodes and Pigneau de Béhaine, whose 1773 Vietnamese-Latin dictionary he had been handed in manuscript form.^[4] He also published Pigneau's dictionary in 1838 under the name Dictionarium Anamitico-Latinum.

In his work The Geography of Cochin China, Taberd reports the Paracel Islands (today a hotly disputed island territory in Southeast Asia) as having been conquered and claimed by Emperor Gia Long in 1816.^[5]

Legacy

In the late 19th century, the renowned Catholic Institution Taberd (vi) was founded in Saigon by the Brothers of the Christian Schools and, since 1943, to educate a Vietnamese elite.^[6][7]

Works

• Dictionarium Latino-Annamiticum completum et novo ordine dispositum (Latin-Vietnamese dictionary), 1838
• Dictionarium Anamitico-Latinum, primitus inceptum ab illustrissimo P.J. Pigneaux, dein absolutum et ed. a J. L. Taberd, Serampore, 1838
• "Note on the Geography of Cochin China". Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. 6 (69): 737–745. 1837.
• "Additional Notice on the Geography of Cochinchina". Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. 7 (76): 314–324. 1838.

Notes

1. Jean-Louis Taberd was likely among the first to explain the meaning of "Cochin China" in his 1837 scientific article.^[3]