People tend to get hung up on a particular spelling of an ancestral surname as being the only way a particular branch of the family would have spelled that name. They may even disregard records for individuals who are actually relatives because of the way a name was spelled. But while these days people have a set way in which they spell their surnames--and their given names--in prior generations this wasn't a huge concern.
I've shown with examples in a previous post that even within the same record the same surname could be spelled differently. Here's another example of where different versions of the same record give different spellings for both surnames and given names.
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| 1864 Jewish births for Budfalu, Hungary (now Budești, Romania) - Version 1 |
The image above lists the 11 Jewish children born in 1864 in what is now Budești, Romania. The infants' given names are in the second column, between the count of births and the dates of birth. The center columns give the names of the child's parents--first the father's and then the mother's, including the mother's maiden name.
And now here is another listing of those births:
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| 1864 Jewish births for Budfalu, Hungary (now Budești, Romania) - Version 2 |
- The child's given name is spelled both Reizye and Rojze.
- The father's surname is spelled both Moszkal and Muszkal
- The father's given name is spelled both Juda and Ide
- The mother's name is given as both Sofia and Saszye (likely because of Hungarian vs. Yiddish name)
The second child has a father named Burech or Barich and mother Aigye / Eigye. And the inconsistencies of spelling persist through the entire list. But it's clear that these are the same individuals.
So don't disregard records of individuals whose given name or surname is spelled slightly differently than how you'd expect. You may be disregarding records that are actually directly applicable to your family!
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I totally agree with the often-repeated sentiment of the article, but respectfully disagree slightly with the title. It is certainly true one needs to be creative in thinking of and recognizing different ways of spelling a name, and it absolutely makes sense to emphasize that, since it is so easy to just look for the spelling you are familiar with. I would add still more sources of spelling variations. Different countries have different spelling conventions as well as preferred given names. My wife’s name is spelled Minkle, but in the earliest records in Brest and the US it’s spelled Manker, and for a branch in France it is spelled Manequin! Also, copying or transcription errors can change a name completely.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, an unusual spelling can sometimes be a hint, particularly for later records. Peixotto is a family name in my family, originating in Portugal. Starting in 1911, there were spelling reforms which eliminated double letters, so for all people I have found who lived in Portuguese-speaking countries at the time, the name is now spelled Peixoto. Since my family probably left during the Inquisition, and Portuguese is a pretty phonetic language, these have remained distinct. Another example is my grandfather’s fairly common German Jewish name, Lansburgh. Even though many other spellings are common in the US, almost all the records I have seen for family members spell the name this way. It may well be a toponym, perhaps for the Bavarian town Landesberg am Lech, so many families with similar names may have been from there, but they may not be related in a genealogical time frame.