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A star before a date meaning the person was born then.
Also known as: Star before a birth date, Asterisk before a date
The asterisk in its genealogical job. It marks a birth date, and it is the mark most often misread outside continental Europe — an English-language reader looks for the matching footnote and does not find one.
A star placed before a date to state that the person was born on it, in the same position an English text would write b. or born.
Contexts: History
Chosen for the star's older association with a nativity, and standard in German-language reference publishing, where it appears in the opening line of a biographical entry.
German-speaking Europe
Regularly mistaken for a footnote marker by readers outside the tradition, who search the foot of the page for a note that does not exist.
A star before a date is a birth mark; a star after a word is usually a footnote.
A small star of five or six short strokes radiating from a common centre, set before a date and raised slightly above the baseline.
One marks the beginning of a life and the other its end.
The genealogical birth mark uses the asterisk glyph in a sense unrelated to footnoting.