Definition
A Latin term appearing in civil law sources with three related but distinct senses:
1. A child between the ages of seven and fourteen. In this broad usage, puer encompassed both sexes, making it roughly equivalent to the English "minor child" within that developmental range. The lower bound of seven was legally significant in Roman law as the age at which a child was considered capable of understanding (doli capax), distinct from an infant (infans) who lacked that capacity entirely.
2. A boy, as distinguished from a girl (puella). In this narrower sense, puer functions as a gendered term referring specifically to male children.
3. A servant or slave. This usage reflects the Roman social context in which household servants were often children or young persons, and the word came to carry both meanings simultaneously.
The maxim associated with this term — Pueri sunt de sanguine parentum, sed pater et mater non sunt de sanguine puerorum (3 Coke 40) — translates as: "Children are of the blood of their parents, but the father and mother are not of the blood of the children." This principle bore on questions of descent and inheritance: blood relationship was understood to flow downward through generations, not upward, which had practical consequences for determining heirs and next of kin under common law rules of consanguinity.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Dung of dogs, fowls, or similar animals, used in tanning after applying lime, to soften skins.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The dung of dogs, used as an alkaline steep in tanning.
The gap here is complete and entirely unrelated. The English trade term "puer" — used in the leather tanning industry — shares no meaning with the Latin legal term of the same spelling. A researcher encountering "puer" in an English-language legal document must determine immediately whether the text is quoting or citing Latin civil law sources (where it means child, boy, or servant) or referring to the tanning process (where it means animal dung used as an alkaline agent). The two terms are false cognates. Context will almost always make this clear, but the collision is worth flagging precisely because neither meaning is intuitive to modern readers.
Why It Matters in Research
Puer appears most often in two research contexts: (1) as a term quoted or glossed in civil law treatises and early common law texts dealing with the capacity of children, minority, and guardianship; and (2) embedded in Latin maxims cited as authority for rules of descent and consanguinity.
The age range of seven to fourteen encoded in puer matters for understanding how historical sources categorized legal capacity. Roman law divided childhood into infancy (under seven, incapable of legal understanding), the puer stage (seven to fourteen, limited capacity), and puberty and above (full or fuller capacity). When early common law writers borrowed these categories, they sometimes adapted them imperfectly, and the boundaries do not map cleanly onto later English rules about the age of discretion, criminal responsibility, or contractual capacity. Researchers using historical sources on minority or infancy should not assume puer maps onto any modern statutory definition of "minor" or "child."
The servant meaning of puer is significant for researchers working in Roman law or early medieval sources, where the ambiguity between "child" and "servant" can affect how household and property records should be read. English legal sources rarely use puer in this third sense, but treatises drawing on the Digest may.
The Coke citation to the blood maxim (3 Coke 40) was influential in common law inheritance discussions and appears in commentary on descent, next-of-kin analysis, and the distinction between lineal and collateral consanguinity. Researchers tracing that doctrine should follow Coke's treatment rather than the civil law source directly.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (both the first and second editions) and Burrill's Law Dictionary are in close agreement on the three senses of puer. All three sources lead with the child-of-seven-to-fourteen definition, note the inclusion of girls in that broader sense, then distinguish the narrower boy-specific usage, and finally acknowledge the servant meaning. Burrill provides the more precise Digest citations (Dig. 50.16.163.1) for the latter two senses, which is useful for researchers who want to trace the Roman law source directly rather than relying on the secondary gloss.
None of the historical dictionaries address the English tanning-trade meaning of "puer," which is not a legal term at all but could generate confusion in archival research.
The maxim Pueri sunt de sanguine parentum is reproduced consistently across both Black's editions. It is worth noting that this maxim, while cited to Coke, reflects a principle ultimately derived from Roman and canon law sources that Coke was synthesizing for common law purposes. Researchers should not treat Coke's citation as the origin of the principle.