The first step we are going to take to know the meaning of the term obituary is to discover its etymological origin. In this case, it must be established that it derives from Latin, specifically from “obitus”, which can be translated as “death”.
Obituary is a term that comes from death (the death of an individual). The dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy ( RAE ) recognizes several meanings related to this issue.
The parish registry in which the death and burial certificates are detailed is called an obituary. The concept can also refer to the obituary or obituary (the article about a subject who died recently ) and to the obituary section of a newspaper or newspaper .
An obituary, therefore, can be a note with biographical information about a personality and data about their death. Generally these texts aim to remember who the deceased person was, reviewing the most important moments of their life.
Obituaries are posthumous : that is, they are published once the protagonist has died. However, sometimes errors have occurred and obituaries were released with the person alive. This is considered a serious error in journalism , since it is taken as a lack of respect.
The risk of premature obituaries is that many newspapers rely on pre-written obituaries to save time. In this way, as soon as the death of someone famous is confirmed, the media only has to fill in some information and thus can spread the note almost instantly.
It must be established that premature obituaries, in addition to an error, can occur for different reasons. We are referring to the fact that the individual is dying, because someone wanted to play a joke on the protagonist, because of an administrative error, because a misunderstanding has occurred or even because there is a confusion with the name. This without overlooking that it can also happen because there is an impostor or because the person in question fakes their own death to avoid being convicted of some type of crime.
Throughout history there have been many premature obituaries, however, there are some especially striking cases such as these:
-Pope John Paul II became the protagonist of three obituaries of this type.
-The British criminal John Allen, who killed his wife and children and later became a serial killer, faked his own death. He pretended to have committed suicide at sea so he could escape the sentence he had pending. For a time he had another identity and continued committing crimes until he was arrested in 2002.
-The writer and forger Alan Irwin even reported his own death in a skiing accident. It was simply a hoax that he prepared for the beginning of 1980. Thus, his obituary was published in "The New York Times."
When the death is reported by mistake , either due to a confusion of names or because the person is very serious but still alive, a premature obituary may be published. In this situation, it is essential that the obituary be rectified as soon as possible.