Terrien de Lacouperie

Albert Étienne Jean Baptiste Terrien de Lacouperie
Born	23 November 1844 Ingouville, Le Havre, Normandy, France
Died	11 October 1894 Fulham, London, England
Fields	Oriental studies, specialising in philology

Albert Étienne Jean Baptiste Terrien de Lacouperie (23 November 1844 in Ingouville, Le Havre – 11 October 1894 in London) was a French orientalist, specialising in comparative philology. He published a number of books on early Asian and Middle-Eastern languages, initially in French and then in English.

Terrien died in London at his residence, 136 Bishop's Road, Fulham, leaving a widow.

Biographical detail on Terrien is scant, some notices drawing on Royal Asiatic Society records and prefaces. He is sometimes noted as born in 1845, although his date of death is firmly established.

He was born in Normandy, a descendant of the Cornish family of Terrien, which emigrated to France in the 17th century during the civil war, and acquired the property of La Couperie in Normandy. Some bibliographies append "Baron" to his name. His father was a merchant, and he received a business education.

In early life he settled at Hong Kong, where he soon turned his attention from commerce to the study of oriental languages, and he acquired an especially intimate knowledge of the Chinese language. In 1867, he published a philological work, Du Langage, Essai sur la Nature et l'Étude des Mots et des Langues (Paris, 8 volumes), which attracted considerable attention. Soon after, his attention was attracted by the progress made in deciphering Babylonian inscriptions, and by the resemblance between the Chinese characters and the early Akkadian hieroglyphics.

The comparative philology of the two languages occupied most of his later life, and he was able to show an early affinity between them. In 1879, he went to London, was elected a fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society, and began to write works in English. In 1884, he became professor of comparative philology, as applied to the languages of South-Eastern Asia, at University College, London.

In the 1880s, he was also employed on several short-term contracts to work on the East-Asian coin collection at the British Museum. In 1892, he published his Catalogue of Chinese Coins from the VIIth Century BC to AS 621 including the Series in the British Museum, for which the Académie des Inscriptions, France, awarded him the Stanislas Julien Prize, worth 1,500 French francs, "for the best work relating to China".

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