Why U Can't Find
Your Ancestors
Misspeld Knames
A Commun Probblem for Reeserchors

Ellis Island
It's a myth about name changes there
Names were rarely changed intentionally at
Ellis Island. The majority of passengers were detailed on the ship's manifest before the vessel left
the port of departure. The purser or ship's officer was familiar with the name and ethnicity of the many
passengers who typically used the port, and the ship visited the port several times each year. The captain
and the medical officer swore affidavits to the accuracy of each group of lists, with 1 to 30 people
in a group. On arrival in the port of New York,
the U. S. inspectors boarded each vessel and examined the manifest and tickets of all classes of
passengers. For those passengers taken to Ellis Island, immigration officials reviewed the questions
and answers with each person. The inspectors developed systems to prevent the misspelling of names. To
handle difficult names, interpreters were on hand who could understand more than 30 languages from Albanian
to Yiddish . . . A few immigrants requested a name change, as a new beginning. However, historical records
and individual testimonies indicate that most name changes occurred during the naturalization process,
not at Ellis Island. from Ellis Island and the Making of America, by Jayare Roberts,
A.G., M.L.S., Genealogical Journal, Volume 23, Numbers 2 and 3, 1995, pp. 79-80.
Name Changes at Ellis Island: Fact or Fiction?
The Great Hang-up:
Spelling of Names
If
you have been unable to find your ancestors in census and other compiled indexes, the problem may be
misreading of the surnames rather than omissions.
Leap
over the name spelling hang-up. Your ancestors may have always spelled or signed their name a certain
way, but you can bet that those who actually recorded their names census takers, county clerks
and tax collectors spelled it in various ways. How often have you had your own surname misspelled?
Think about it. To insist your name has always been spelled a particular way is to set yourself up for
defeat in genealogical research.
According to William Thorndale, in The
Source, "An enormous amount of genealogical research fails because people do not take
simple precautions in searching for spelling variants."
As a professional researcher, Thorndale emphasizes to his clients
how important spelling variants are. "I practically plead for these researchers to always check
all forms of the first vowel when searching census indexes," he said. But many of us ignore this
wise advice. Thorndale also warns about such spelling problems as:
Calligraphic look-alikes:
Daniel and David
Phonetic equivalents:
Sincere for St. Cyr
Translation equivalents:
Carpenter for Zimmerman
Truncates:
Fitzjurrell for Fitzgerald
Other spelling irregularities such as
Cowper pronounced as Cooper
Some spelling variations include a different initial letter
or the first vowel, or can be hidden by an "h" as the second letter. If I only looked at "Go"
in indices, I would miss all the "Gho" spellings of Gormley. These quirks of spelling can throw
surnames into unexpected places in the indices. Occasionally, the problem is due to a computer's placement
of names due to spacing. That is, you often will find MacDonald and Mac Donald listed as different surnames.
And, don't forget to look for McDonald.
Surnames beginning with a vowel or an "H" should be
sought under ALL vowels plus "H," at least until one becomes familiar with spelling variants
that frequently occur of a particular surname.
Example: Autry, Awtrey, Autery, Hawtrey, and Ottery.
The "H" slips in and out of words in disconcerting
fashion. Your Allard ancestor may appear in an index (or a record) as Alhurd, so be especially alert
about spellings that put an "h" after plausible initial letters. The letter "R" is
a semi-vowel within words and occasionally appears in unexpected places with no particular pattern.
Many a researcher has missed their ancestor in records due to
spelling oversights. Watch for letter transpositions. These are common in computerized indices and compilations
prepared from typed records. When checking indexes in books, pay attention to how the book was compiled.
Many genealogical books contain several indexes in a single volume, often arranged by the time period
of the particular records involved. If you only check the index at the back of a book, you may miss your
ancestors.
Many of us have surnames that differ somewhat from the ones
our immigrant ancestors brought to America. In many cases, it is just a slight spelling variation of
the original name not a name change. In others, the name we use may be an anglicized version,
and in still others, descendants have wound up with a completely different surname. Most North American
researchers discover their surname has variant spellings or has been changed in some way. This could
have occurred for such reasons as:
Necessity. Most typewriters and typesetting equipment
used by North Americans could not cope with the diacritical markings used above or below certain letters
found in several European languages, or the logographs seen in Chinese. Similarly, names written originally
in Hebrew, Cyrillic, Arabic and a number of other alphabets had to be transliterated into the ones used
in this the U.S. or Canada, for example.
Inability to spell or carelessness. Many immigrants could
not spell (in English) her or his name. So when they gave their name to county clerks, enumerators, etc.,
that person wrote the name as it sounded to him.
Difficulty in pronouncing or spelling a name. Some names,
particularly Polish, are difficult for most Americans and Canadians to spell or pronounce. A Polish immigrant
named Dzeckaeiar may have simplified the name to Decker.
Desire to break with the past. North America, Australia
and other localities were a new beginning for many of our ancestors, and some had no desire to retain
anything, including their name, that reminded them of an unhappy past in the old country.
Disagreement with relatives. Some family members changed
their names completely, or the spelling slightly, to avoid being associated with a disliked relative
or neighbor with the same name. Many family traditions claim such instances to explain how the particular
spelling of their surname came in existence. However, such stories are not always accurate.
Dislike of the original name. Many Jewish people, in
particular, disliked the names that may have been forced on them in the old country.
Fear
of bad treatment. Some of our immigrant ancestors had fled from countries where they were mistreated,
and thought a change of name might avert further problems in the new country. During World War I, many
German-Americans changed or altered their names because they feared discrimination and maltreatment.
Getting rid of a semantic objection. Some names, such
as Lipschitz or Gelbfisch, seemed humorous to Americans, and such names were often changed.
Desire for material success. Second- or third-generation
Americans sometimes changed their names because they felt a "wrong" name might prevent them
from becoming successful or getting a particular job.
Whatever
the reasons for a name change, the genealogist must learn to look for all possible spellings and transliterations.
Basically, most Western surnames come from one of four types:
Patronymics The father's given name with "son"
or an "s" added to it.
Place Names Words that identified where a person
lived or came from.
Occupational Names What a person did for a living.
Many of these are based upon medieval occupations.
Nicknames Names based on a person's characteristics,
either personality or appearance. A small percentage of us have names derived from nicknames of ancestors
who lived many centuries ago.
Under what other spellings might your ancestors
be hiding in the records?
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Asian names generally do not follow the standard Western patterns.
For example, Chinese names are almost always one-syllable words that may be taken after the name of an
old ruling family. In Japan, names were created more recently out of two unrelated, but often poetic
words. Jewish names sometimes are made up acronyms abbreviations that combine a number of words.
Beware of the fallacy of a practice common in many families
that of assuming that if the name is not spelled in a certain way it cannot belong to the same
family. Don't pass over important genealogical records because the name happens to be spelled with an
a rather than an e, with an ie rather than
a y, or with one n rather than with two.
Be extremely careful in use of indexes. Consider every possible
spelling of the name sought. Local dialects and foreign accents often make a significant difference.
Even the pronunciation, and hence the spelling, of an English-derived name may be quite different in
Massachusetts than it is in Alabama, Quebec, Sydney, or Liverpool.
Not MineIt's Not Spelled
Rite
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A professional genealogist relates the story of how she worked
on a line for a client for more than 20 hours and found the client's father as a child in the 1920 census,
and then located the grandparents in the passenger lists. Additionally, the researcher was able to extend
the pedigree back another four generations to the middle 1800s in Italy.
Excited to have such good news to share, the
professional genealogist quickly typed up the report and mailed it to the client. Days went by and then
the phone rang. It was the client who told the researcher:
"You've got the wrong family."
And what was the client's reason for thinking
this? Two of the children in the 1920 census were recorded with nicknames instead of with their given
names.
This is a common scenario in the genealogical
world. Verbal arguments sometimes erupt over the spelling of a surname. People will insist that their
surname has always been spelled a particular way even when the records indicate otherwise. They
foolishly will refuse to accept a lineage with a different spelling and will overlook their ancestors
in records because of this surname spelling hang-up.
Toss out everything Miss Jones taught you in
elementary school
about surname spelling. It doesn't matter in genealogy. In addition to the fact that earlier generations,
prior to the late 19th century, really didn't worry as much about spelling, transcribers did not always
read a record accurately. Whenever you are working with indexes, it is important to look up any possible
variant spelling that you can think of. You might even want to get wacky with a pen. Take a piece of
paper and start writing the surname in script. See how messy or different you can make it and then see
what letters it brings to mind. Chances are you are likely to find a few of those "variants"
in indexes.
Finally, to give you an idea of how little spelling
counts, a land deed for one ancestor has his name spelled three different ways. In his will, the man's
name is spelled four ways. One surname has been found spelled 24 different ways in the same locality,
and listed under three different letters of the alphabet A, E and I. Would you think to look for
a Shoemaker family under "J"? That's how some wound up in the 1900 Soundex, the S being read
as "Jh."
Miscellaneous quotations
from
Correct Mispronunciations of
Some South Carolina Names
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Buyck BIKE. Some are tempted to pronounce two
syllables, BUE-ik, like the car, but in South Carolina the family name is just one, BIKE. (Neuffer,
p. 23)
Horry OH-REE. The northern coastal county of
Horry is named for Revolutionary Colonel Peter Horry . . . stories evidence the too-often incorrect pronunciation
of Horry . . . story is of Northern visitors. With their guidebook for a walking tour of Charleston,
they were looking in vain for Colonel Horry's house. Seeing an old nurse walking her little aristocratic
charges along the Battery, the lead visitor sought assistance: "Pardon, could you tell us where
the HOH-ri House is?" Quick was the old nurse's indignant reply: "Don't you dare talk dat way
in front of dese chillun. Dis is a `spectable neighborhood. What you looking fah is over on Beresford
Street." The Big Brick for years was the notorious house of prostitution on Beresford Street. .
. (Sam Stoney, the Mr. Charleston of South Carolina historians, is our source for this Horry story.)
(Neuffer, p.85)
Ribaut ree-Boe, ree-BAW, ree-BOTE. Ribaut Road,
one of the main streets of lowcountry Beaufort, is named for the early Huguenot leader Jean Ribaut. In
1562 he established his short-lived colony Charlesfort on Parris Island in Port Royal Sound. Although
ree-BAW is heard fairly often, when Kershaw Tom Peach went calling on his intended May Dowling in Beaufort,
he got puzzled looks when he asked the location of ree-BAW Road; finally one of the older native folks
clarified, "Some of the young ones just call it ree-BOAT, but most of us still prefer Ree-BOE."
(Neuffer, p. 147)
Vanderhorst VAN DRAWS; VAN-duh HOHRST (DRAWS
rhymes with sauce). Of Dutch origin, Arnoldus Vander Horst (1748-1815), Charleston planter, was a captain
in the Revolution under General Francis Marion. . . The street in Charleston is pronounced VAN DRAWS.
The street in Winnsboro is pronounced VAN-duh-HOHRST. (Neuffer, p. 168)
Xulu Hoo-Loo (oo as in hoop). This word is used
a couple of times in the narratives of the early Spanish explorers and may be merely a variant of Xuala.
However, it is taken to mean the Cherokee Territory, which encompassed the southern Appalachians, extending
nearly as far south as present-day Atlanta in Georgia and extended as far east as present-day Cheraw
in South Carolina. For some reason historians, if they acknowledge the term at all, tend to pronounce
it Hoo-Loo, although Shoo-Loo or Zoo-Loo may be closer to what the inhabitants of the region were actually
saying to those first European explorers. (Neuffer, p. 181).
Neuffer, Claude and Irene. Correct Mispronunciations of Some South Carolina Names. Columbia,
SC: University of South Carolina, 1983.
Surname Spellings and Legalities
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Idem Sonans. This means that in order to establish
legal proof of relationship from documentary evidence it is not necessary for the name to be spelled
absolutely accurately if, as spelled, it conveys to the ear, when pronounced in the accepted ways, a
sound practically identical to the correctly spelled name as properly pronounced.
Greenwood, Val D. The Researcher's Guide to American Genealogy (2nd edition). Baltimore, Md.:
Genealogical Publishing Co., 1990. p. 32.
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Suggested Reading
& References |
Bardsley, Charles Wareing. A Dictionary of
English and Welsh Surnames with special American instances. Baltimore, Md.: Genealogical
Publishing Co., Inc., 1980.
Beider, Alexander. Jewish Surnames in Prague
(15th-18th Centuries). Teaneck, N.J.: Avotaynu, Inc., 1995.
Greenwood, Val D. The Researcher's Guide
to American Genealogy (2nd edition). Baltimore, Md.: Genealogical
Publishing Co., Inc., 1990.
Hanks, Patrick and Flavia Hodges. A Dictionary
of First Names. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Ison, Alf, A Secretary Hand ABC Book.
Exeter, Devon: Berkshire Books, an imprint of Wheaton Publishers Ltd., 1990.
Kirkham, E. Kay. The Handwriting of American
Records for a Period of 300 years. Logan, Utah: Everton Publishers, Inc. 3rd Printing, 1981.
Kolatch, Alfred J. Dictionary of First Names.
New York: The Putnam Publishing Group, 1990.
McLaughlin, Eve. Simple Latin for Family
Historians. Birmingham: Federation of Family History Societies, rev. ed. 1991.
Neuffer, Claude and Irene. Correct Mispronunciations
of Some South Carolina Names. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina, 1983.
Rule, Larena. Name Your Baby: Original Meanings,
Nicknames, Famous Namesakes. New York: Bantam Books, rev. 1986.
Sperry, Kip. Reading Early American Handwriting.
Baltimore, Md.: Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., 1998.
Stryker-Rodda, Harriet. Understanding Colonial
Handwriting (originally published in "New Jersey History" (Spring-Summer 1980); revised
edition published by Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., Baltimore,
Md., 1986, 1987, 1989.
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