Michael Adami

* Bellus, 1720. – † Vienna, March 11, 1781. / Jesuit monk, linguist, heraldist, genealogist ; ; He joined the Jesuit order in 1740, but left in 1750 and worked in Vienna in the service of the imperial court. He was a teacher of Hungarian at the Vienna Military Academy. In 1760, he wrote a Hungarian grammar and a language book for Archduke Charles. He also started a family and heraldry collection, but did not finish it. His 14-volume heraldic work entitled Scutagentilitia illustrium ac. nobil Familiarum Hungariae coloribus distinctae remained in manuscript, and can be found in the National Széchényi Library. His other heraldic work is the Collectanea heraldica Hungariae, quibus descriptiones complurium scutorum nobilitarium plurimum e Libro Regio extractorum comprehenduntur. It contains descriptions of the coats of arms of the heraldic letters found in the Royal Books from the period between 1685 and 1770. The genealogist Iván Nagy also drew from these works when writing his work entitled The Families of Hungary. A Hungarian–Latin–German dictionary of his also survived in manuscript. As a linguist, he influenced the development of Hungarian orthography.