Definition
Girantem (also: girans) is a Latin-form adaptation of the Italian commercial term girare (to draw or endorse), used in older legal instruments and pleadings to denote the drawer of a bill of exchange or similar negotiable instrument. The word appears most often in the accusative case (girantem) as it would occur in a formal Latin pleading referring to "the drawer" as the object of a legal action or allegation. In practice, it names the party who originates a bill of exchange by drawing it — that is, the person who orders a second party (the drawee) to pay a sum to a third party (the payee).
Common Confusion
Girantem is sometimes confused with terms referring to the endorser or indorser of a negotiable instrument. The confusion is understandable: in Italian commercial usage, girare encompasses both drawing and endorsing, and the related term giratario refers to the endorsee. In English legal pleading, however, girantem carried the narrower meaning of drawer specifically — the party who originates the instrument — not a subsequent endorser in the chain of title.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is a research trap. It appears almost exclusively in older English and early American pleadings and treatises on maritime loans and bills of exchange, where Latin forms were routinely imposed on Italian commercial vocabulary. A researcher encountering girantem in a historical document needs to recognize it immediately as "the drawer" and not mistake it for a generic reference to endorsers or acceptors.
The term has essentially no modern legal usage. By the mid-nineteenth century, common law pleading had moved away from Latinized commercial vocabulary, and statutes governing bills of exchange — culminating in the Bills of Exchange Act 1882 in England and Article 3 of the Uniform Commercial Code in the United States — replaced archaic terminology with standardized English. Any corpus appearance of girantem almost certainly dates the document to the eighteenth century or earlier, and likely places it in the context of admiralty, merchant law, or treatise writing influenced by continental commercial practice.
When researching negotiable instruments history, girantem is a marker pointing toward the lex mercatoria tradition — the body of customary merchant law that preceded domestic statutory codification. Bouvier's citation to Hall on Marine Loans signals where this term lived: specialized maritime commercial finance, not ordinary domestic bills of exchange practice.
Historical Dictionary Support
Both Rapalje & Lawrence and Bouvier agree entirely on the meaning: the drawer, derived from the Italian girare. Neither source suggests any ambiguity or competing definition. Bouvier adds a useful linguistic observation — that girantem follows the same pattern of Latinization seen in other borrowings into legal Latin, comparing it to the transformation of the English "murder" into murdrare in old indictments. This is a genuine insight for researchers: it confirms that girantem is not a native Latin or classical Roman law term but an artificial legal-Latin construction built on living Italian commercial vocabulary.
What neither source addresses is the range of related Italian-derived terms a researcher might encounter alongside girantem: giratario (endorsee), girata (endorsement), and related forms. Bouvier's citation to Hall's Marine Loans (a real treatise on maritime finance) situates the term properly but provides no guidance on how it appeared in actual pleading practice across different jurisdictions. Researchers working in early American admiralty records or colonial commercial dispute documents should be alert to these companion terms.
Jurisdictional Note
Girantem appears primarily in English legal sources and in American sources derived from English practice. It is unlikely to appear in civil law jurisdiction documents in this form, since those traditions would have retained the Italian or French commercial vocabulary directly rather than Latinizing it.