Jean-Louis Taberd

A page of Jean-Louis Taberd's 1838 Vietnamese-Latin dictionary (Dictionarium Anamitico-Latinum), based on the manuscript dictionary of Pigneau de Béhaine. Jean-Louis Taberd (1794–1840) was a French missionary of the Paris Foreign Missions Society, apostolic vicar of Cochinchina, and titular bishop of Isauropolis, in partibus infidelium. He edited and published the Dictionarium Anamitico-Latinum, building upon earlier efforts by Pierre Pigneau de Béhaine and Vietnamese Catholics.

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, modern Vietnam. In 1827 he was appointed Vicar Apostolic of Cochinchina, and Bishop of the titular see of Isauropolis in 1830. 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.

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.

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