Definition
A Latin term from the civil law meaning to name, to declare, or to pronounce something orally — in spoken words rather than in writing. The act of nuncupare was the formal oral act by which a person publicly declared or named something, most commonly an heir or a testamentary wish, before witnesses. The term is the root of the English legal terms nuncupative and nuncupation, and underlies the concept of a nuncupative will — a will made by spoken declaration rather than written instrument.
Common Confusion
Nuncupare is sometimes loosely treated as synonymous with any oral statement, but the civil law usage carried a more specific sense: a solemn, formal oral declaration made before witnesses, not mere informal speech. The formality element distinguishes nuncupare from casual or incidental oral statements. Researchers should not assume that any oral utterance in a historical legal context carries the weight that nuncupare implied.
Why It Matters in Research
Nuncupare itself rarely appears in English-language case law or statutes — it is primarily a term of the civil law tradition encountered in Roman law sources, early treatise writing, and in Latin maxims embedded in ecclesiastical and equity contexts. Its practical importance to Law Mind corpus researchers is almost entirely derivational: the term is the foundation for nuncupative, which appears with far greater frequency in common law authorities dealing with oral wills, deathbed declarations, and soldiers' and sailors' wills.
When tracing the history of nuncupative wills in historical digests, encyclopedias, or treatises, researchers will encounter nuncupare in the Latin quotations or maxims that precede or support the English text. Burrill's usage — "nuncupare hæredem," to name one's heir viva voce before witnesses — is a particularly useful formulation because it captures both the act (oral naming) and the formal requirement (witnesses present), which together define the legal threshold separating a valid nuncupative act from unwitnessed informal speech.
Researchers working with civil law sources, Louisiana materials, or historical ecclesiastical probate records are most likely to encounter the term in its Latin form. In those contexts, nuncupare signals that the document is engaging with the Roman law heritage of testamentary declaration rather than the common law tradition of written, witnessed wills.
Historical Dictionary Support
The three source dictionaries are in close agreement. Black's (1st and 2nd editions) and Burrill all define nuncupare as the act of naming or pronouncing orally, in words without writing. There is no substantive divergence among the sources on meaning.
Burrill adds the most useful contextual gloss: the specific application "nuncupare hæredem" — to name one's heir by living voice (viva voce) before witnesses — with attribution to Calvinus's Lexicon Juridicum, a standard civil law reference work. This addition is valuable because it grounds the abstract Latin verb in its most legally consequential application: testamentary naming. Black's 2nd edition entry appears to have suffered some typographic corruption in the surviving text ("Tro name," "sill leila," "solenvnily"), but the underlying content is consistent with the 1st edition and Burrill.
None of the historical dictionaries address the common law reception of the concept, the statutory history of nuncupative wills in English or American law, or the evidentiary rules that governed oral testamentary declarations. Researchers should treat these entries as civil law definitional anchors and consult dedicated nuncupative will entries for the common law doctrinal development.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Nuncupative Wills; Wills — Formal Requirements; Civil Law Testamentary Succession