Notary

At its simplest, a notary is a neutral third party who checks who you are, watches you sign, and then adds their own stamp and signature to confirm it happened properly. That extra layer is what makes a document harder to forge and easier to rely on, especially when it will be used somewhere far from where it was signed. How much power a notary actually holds is where things get interesting, because it depends enormously on the country.

This term varies more by region than almost any other in the glossary, because it splits along the common-law and civil-law divide. In the US a notary public is a state-appointed official whose job is mainly to verify identity and witness signatures; the role is common, quick, and administrative. In England and Wales a notary is a specialist lawyer, fairly rare, appointed and regulated by the Faculty Office of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and used mostly for documents heading abroad. In most EU countries a civil-law notary is something much bigger: a public officer who drafts and issues "authentic instruments" that carry higher legal force than ordinary contracts and can even be enforced without going to court. Worth noting that notaries do not exist in every EU member state.