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Genealogy: Library Article

Polish Naming Conflicts by Marvin Kusmierz How many times has someone miss-spelled your last name? Most likely your answer is several times and some may now be a part of a record such as a telephone directory, an article your name appears in, a church directory or some other document. Errors in spelling a persons name are fairly common today and in the times of your ancestors. Unfortunately, our ancestors can not alert us to these errors from their time period. It is with this fact in mind, that starting research on your family's genealogy needs to be open to the possibilites of errors in the records that you will encounter. Names spelled wrong, errors in transcribed dates or places, and, one or more records with conflicting information on the same data reference. Sorting out what is correct is not easy and may never be possible. Below are some references that may be helpful to you in doing this process of deduction: Polish Alphabet: To begin with, the Polish alphabet is different than the English alphabet. It is important to have a basic understanding of their difference in order to identify the possibilities of the original surname spelling that may have been changed. Review the Polish Alphabet and you will find the letters "Q", "V", and "X" do not exist in the Polish alphabet. You will also find that diacritics marks (graphic symbols) are used with some letters and in several cases one letter can have the same sound as in English or with a diacritic mark a different sound. The Polish letter "L" is an example of this. When the L has a angled line through it's vertical stem "£" (this is commonly represent with the "~" symbol when recorded without using Polish type characters, for example "L~".) it has the sound of an English "W". On the other hand, the Polish "W" has the sound of an English "V". So, it becomes easy to understand how names may have been spelled different in the past. If your Polish name today begins with a "V", you have to know it probably once was spelled with a "W". Opportunities for Spelling Changes: There are many opportunities for an ancestors surname to be spelled differently. But before we cite some of these, consider the time period during which your ancestors lived. How important would they have percieved the importance of records keeping back then? It is unlikely that the accuracy of records had much importance to many of our ancestors before the 1900s. Why? Well, education was pretty much non-existent for most families. Reading and writing were not an essential survival tool. Verbal communication was a sufficient tool for meeting the demands on their lives. Even in viewing a recorded document on themselves, not being able to read they could would not question a different recorded spelling of their surname. Transcribing: Okay, so my ancestor was not able to read or write. But, the person who transcribed my answers record must have been able to! That is true. However, by our own experience even though we have the reading and writing capability, our names are still being transcribed incorrectly. Why? Well, even an excellent typist has been known to have a lazy finger that can easily change an "N" to an "M". Unless someone corrects the error, it's a record. But, most of our ancestors records were record by hand taken from verbally communicated information. Consider the following exhange between a records transcriber who is Irish and my Polish ancestor communicating the information: Recorder: "What is your name?" My ancestor's reply: "Kooshmisz" Recorder transcribes: "Cushmich" Actual name: "Kusmierz" How can Kusmierz become Cushmich? Well, Kusmierz in the Polish has this sound and a few others depending on the use of diacritic marks. Using the Polish alphabet it would go like this: Reference Spelling ENGLISH Pronunciation POLISH Pronunciation My Surname K u s m i e r z C u s m e y e r s Koos - merz with diacritic s~ K u s~ m i e r z Same Koosh - merz with diacritic z~ K u s m i e r z~ Same Koos - misz with diacritic s~ and z~ K u s~ m i e r z~ Same Koosh - misz Foot note: Within my own family, members have used different pronunciations of our surname. My mother always said, "Kooshmisz". My brother, "Cuzmeyers". Myself, "Kooshmerz". So, we actively contribute to the confusion of our own family surname. The Irish recording clerk most likely would not understand this variance in the sounds of letters in the Polish language and would proceed to spell the name as it sounded to them, "Cushmich" or something close this. So, you are reading a ship's manifest looking for Kusmierz when you also need to be looking for Cushmich and other potential spellings of a surname as well. Solution: Use the Soundex system whenever it is available for doing a broad search for ancestors. Soundex is a system devised to find names that are similar in how they sound. Many internet search sites provide this capability in researching their online database of records. You can also print out a list of names from the soundex reference for your particular surnames to use in checking non-soundex capable resources. An understanding of the Soundex system: The National Archives of the U.S. devised this system for indexing the U.S. Censuses beginning with 1880. Soundex makes surnames of the same or similar sounds, but with different spellings easier to identify. The system uses the first letter that name begins with then assigns a number to each of the next three consonants in the name. The following table shows the coding system for doing this. Soundex Coding System System Note Code Letters 1 B - P - F - V 2 C - S - G - J - K - Q - X - Z 3 D - T 4 L 5 M - N 6 R The letters "A, E, I, O, U, Y, H, W" are not coded. Prefixes to names such as; van, Von, Di, de, le, D', dela, or du are sometimes disregarded in alphabetizing and in coding. Example: Soundex code for "Kusmierz" is "K256". "K" first letter of name "2" for "s" "5" for "m" "6" for "r" Get the soundex code for your surnames (Courtesy of RootsWeb.com): Surname:    Conclusion: Now that you have a better understanding of the pitfalls in researching a surname, we recommend approaching your genealogy research by simply accepting the fact that the spelling of an ancestor's name is not the most important issue. The essence of genealogy is to identify those who are family members regardless of how their name is spelled. Related resources: Polish Alphabet - Compares Polish versus English alphabet. Includes audio files. Surname Meanings/Origins - Explains Polish naming conventions. Research Center/Poland Subject Library - Links to additional resources. US Immigration and Naturalization Service - Changing Immigrant Names.