An extract from the feature article, "Deciphering Latin Handwriting in German Documents" by Dr. Roger P Minert.

. . . There are essentially three types or styles used in the recording of birth, marriage, and death information in German church books: column-entry, sentence, and paragraph.  each one is described in detail. . .

Column Entries

    The easiest and most efficient system--used frequently with birth and death records--was that of dividing the page into columns with headings on each page. Typical superscripts almost invariably included the christening date [baptizatum], the name(s) of child(ren) [infantes], the name(s) of parents [parentes], and the name(s) of sponsor(s) [patrines or levantes], or witnesses(es) [testes].  More detailed records include columns for birth date [natus], birthplace [locus], and the name of the presiding pastor [baptizans], the gender of the child [genus], the legal status of the child [status, conditio], and the number of the child (usually counted consecutively per year). . . .

. . . Here are some problems that occur in column-entry records:

1.  In older records there may not be a name listed for the child.  In such cases, the convention dictates that the name of the first sponsor of the same gender is the name given to the child.  On occasion the witness is not of the same gender and the name given to the child is the root of the sponsor's name, to which is added the ending showing the proper sex: the sponsor is Christina (feminine), the child Christian (masculine). . .