Surname question

[Montauk6]

I noticed that in some of the trees I've come across there are immediate families with same surnames, different spellings.

Example:

John Smythe, 3 children listed: Martha Smythe, John Smyth, and William Smith

or

Walter Seelye, 1 son: Walter Seeley

What's the story on this? Is it actual or is it a misspelling on the compiler's part?

[Gormy Cuss]

1. It could be misspellings, or actual name changes.

On someone else's trees I view the changes with some suspicion if a source isn't cited. In modern generations, sometimes one or more people 'simplify' the family name to a more easily spelled or phonetic version or less ethnic. I've known Rosenbaums with uncles surnamed Rosen, for example. In my own extended family in Maine there are French-Canadian names that morphed into English names. Pelletier became Pelkey and Sirois became Searway. There are also 'dit' names, where the surname was a compound name in New France (Quebec,)such as Carignan dit Messier, and in the American generations some sibling went by Carignan, some by Messier.

The other more common way that I've encountered surname variations is in earlier civil records when spelling wasn't as standardized and many people were of limited literacy. Public record clerks recorded the names the way they understood them. If they heard "Smith" then that's the way it was recorded.
As you probably know census records often have creative spellings too. Soundex was developed for a reason!

Unfortunately as a family researcher you may need to develop a number of references for a branch before you can decide which spelling is most accurate for that family. I tend to record all variants until I have a reasonable idea of which version is most common, but I will preserve the variants in the record sources as alternatives.

[Montauk6]

2. Y'know, I STILL haven't figured out what Soundex is all about... I suck...

:-(

[Gormy Cuss]

3. M532

:think: That's Montauk in Soundex.

The general principal is first letter, then up to three consonants coded. Vowels are ignored as are repeated consonants. Where it gets tricky is that similar sounding consonants shares the same number (m and n are both 5) and the half vowel consonants (H, W, and Y) are treated like vowels and ignored.

Soundex does help cut through lots of misspelled surnames in census. Smith, Smythe, and Smyth all share the code S530 in Soundex. It's handy if you need to use the old microfilm indexes of 1880,1900 and 1920 censuses. Some search engines allow Soundex searches too.

[CBHagman]

5. Soundex is actually a godsend.

At first I thought it was an awkward tool to use, but then I realized it would cut through all the spelling variations of my ancestors' names.

[Montauk6]

6. Too bad they don't have this for first names!

Now THAT would be a big help. For Onnie, I've seen Arney, Onie, etc. Same with Emeline, there's Emmaline, Emaline, Emalin, etc. And, believe me, that variation can play on your search results.

[hfojvt]

11. they seem to do some of that in ancestry

I have had a census subscription there for 3 years or so. About a year ago the 1880 census became worthless to me. In an "exact search" they started to list not just the matches, but everyone in the family. So looking for Robert Jordan in Ohio would not just get me several dozen hits but several hundred which to me made the search almost useless.

When another census year did that to me I wrote to complain. Their response was useless, since they claimed I was not using "exact search" but when I was playing around with options I discovered that "ranked search" works better and I have been using it for most searches ever since. A ranked search will give you variations of the first name.

The other option, if the surname is rare enough, or you know a location or a year of birth is to search for just the surname - (leave the first name blank) in that township, or county, or with that year or place of birth. That can be tough though with a name like Campbell, Smith or Johnson, etc. I have pretty much given up on my Campbells - in both directions.

[fudge stripe cookays]

18. Try having an ancestor named Melchior.

The census takers didn't even TRY with this guy. A dour Pennsylvania Dutchman tells them his name is "Mel KYOR' ", so they just said, "Yea, whatever, buddy..." and wrote down what they thought he said.

So far, I've found Melcher, Malcher, Malchi, Melchi...

Then we had some Tiearneys. Which usually ends up Turney.

You get the picture.
:eyes:

[sybylla]

4. I've encountered lots of surname variations

One as recent as the civil war. My great-great-great grandfather was Peter Blum, a native of Switzerland though he had lived her for at least two decades. When he enlisted in the army in Madison in 1865, he did not know how to spell his name. It was recorded as Peter Bloom. Peter had nine children. The older children who did not attend public school (as they did not yet exist) spelled the name as he learned it in the army - Bloom. The younger children, who had the benefit of public education, learned the proper spelling - Blum. So I have a family divided - three sons used Bloom, two used Blum.

I also have family whose last name suffered through general immigration problems. French record keepers trying to spell English names (Canada), English record keepers trying to spell names spoken with an accent(US, England).

And this is all besides the fact that before about 1850, there was very little standardized spelling even for the small percentage of literate people. If I recall correctly, it was Andrew Jackson who remarked on the intelligence of a person who could not think of at least two ways to spell a word.

It has only been in the last 150 years that we have gotten so particular about spelling and even knowing how to spell our own name.

The variations you are seeing are likely whatever was most common in the records.

[Cybergata]

7. Spanish names in New Mexico

I've been researching my Hispanic New Mexican half of my genealogy, and the various ways people spelled names took me a while to incorporate a mental soundex into my research. I was looking for marriage records for Garcia, and didn't even think to look for Garcilla or Garzia. When I first began, I totally passed over the marriage records of one set of GG Grandparents because I was looking for Soledad Luna and Victoriano Sanchez and didn't recognize them as Maria Soledad Luna and Jose Bictoriano Sanches.

From 1598 up to the early 1900s, all birth, marriage, and death records were recorded by the Catholic Church, and everyone seems to have a Maria/Jose in front of their names. I skipped records of ancestors until I finally figured this out. I stopped looking for Ramon, Juan, Concepcion, etc and stared looking under Jose Ramon, Jose Juan, Maria Concepcion. Of course if an ancestor was named Jose or Jose Jose, then that means weeding out which Jose it is since Jose was a very popular name.

Also, being so isolated from the rest of the world, New Mexicans had very little to write with or read, so many were illiterate. This also figures into the spelling of names. Very old Spanish spellings for name continued to be used long after people in other parts of the Spanish speaking world had moved on to newer ways of spelling these names. Bs were used in places I was used to looking for Vs, Ss for Zs. My GG Grandmother, Benigna Martinez was recorded as Maria Venigna Martines.

The best part of looking through these old Spanish records is that woman were always listed with their maiden name. In fact it is interesting how many daughter took their mother's father's name while the sons took their father's name. Sometimes the men took their mother's family name if that family was a more influential family. It was also traditional for women to use their birth name if they became widows. Looking through the U.S. census, in 1860, Benigna was listed as Benigna Lopez, but in the 1870 census she was Benino Martinez. That let me know that my GG grandfather, Ramon Lopez, had died sometime between 1860-1870.

[Gormy Cuss]

8. Good description of why retracing your steps is sometimes best

I missed the records of many relatives the first time I searched through VRs for similar reasons. The first names for all girls in a family were Mary/Marie/Maria in Irish,French, and Italian traditions too.

My favorite names are the ones that were odd even in their day. Those names get mangled repeatedly. I have a colonial era ancestor whose first name was Achsah -- an obscure Old Testament name. She never married. I saw several web pages that listed the gender as male but in census records she was consistently shown as female. When I saw photocopies of the handwritten town records I noticed that her name had been recorded as 'Axa' and some folks interpreted as Asa and therefore changed her gender. :-)

[Cybergata]

9. My favorite names for searching

My first big find for my New Mexico Hispanic ancestry was due to the name Juan Geronimo. There are dozens of Juans and other names, but Geronimo wasn't as widely used. He was my key to opening the door for other ancestors. Celso is another name that was and still is used, but rarely. My Great Grandfather was named Celso López. There weren't many other Celso in New Mexico in the mid to late 1800s, but there were quite a few Jose and Juan Lópezes at the time living in New Mexico.

On my Anglo side, the name that gave me problems was Sela Cooley. I was given the name Cecilia Cooley from my grandmother's records, and her daughter was Cecilia Walker, who had a daughter named Stella Ann Cole who was the mother of my grandmother Mabel Cecilia Atwood. Somewhere between Sela and my grandmother the spelling was changed.

Using a mental soundex is the key to finding people.

[sybylla]

10. I have a couple of French names that have given me grief

The worst was when my great-great grandfather, Joachim Cournoyer immigrated from Quebec to the English dominated Ontario around 1850. Trying to find records of him and his family takes a great deal of "soundex" creativity. You have to know how it was prounounced in French and then imagine how an Englishman would spell it. I eventually found his name written in the census in the worst handwriting(as if the author was trying to disguise his poor spelling) as Jorsem Connier.

When his sons, Simon and Denis, came to Wisconsin, they had similar trouble here, though nothing near so bad.

And they also have the Marie & Jean phenomenon in Canada, too. In addition they have a tradition of giving their children many more than two names, any one of which can show up in a record. For example, Marie Therese Catherine Dalpec may appear in one record as Therese Dalpec, another as Catherine Dalpec, another as Marie-Catherine Dalpec, yet another as Therese-Catherine, sometimes just as Marie, perhaps as Marie-Therese and there is probably one record in the bunch where you find her listed as Jeanne, which is the name everyone called her to avoid confusion because she had and aunt Therese and an aunt Catherine and an aunt Marie.

[Cybergata]

12. The French and Spanish have a lot in common.

Especially if your ancestors came from the Basque or Pyrenees area. There is always the Catholic name and all those other last names and addition of place names. I was looking for someone the family always called Toni Lucero and found her as Maria Antonia Meregilda Dolores Lucero and she didn't even have her mother's name, Becerra, included. She lived in the 1800s. Her ancestors in the 1600s would have two last names. What am I saying!!!!! There were still people in the 1800s using both last names. I see this practice coming back in use these days. I have students with surnamed names like García de Thompson.

[Joe Chi Minh]

13. I believe Shakespeare wrote his name in twelve different ways.

Spelling only seems to have become formalised in more recent times; and names not necessarily at all. My birth name was "Mylne", but the usual spelling is "Milne". It's the same clan name.

Technically, I think "Mylne" is still my proper name, as it was never changed by deed poll. But I've never used it since my mother remarried, when I was in primary school. (It's been "Becke" ever since then, including on all formal documentation, and out of loyalty to the man who didn't two-time my mother, I've kept it; even though he certainly had his faults, as a husband to my mother - she later divorced him - and as step-father to us children. Though I understand my mother's anger towards him, he seemed a good man, and certainly could have been a lot worse).

[Cybergata]

15. Last names of children raised by others

I had the most difficult time finding the father a GG Grandmother until I found some reference of her connected to her father who had a different name. The father's name was Montaño. The strange thing about it is that Rita was raised by her father and mother. It was her father who was raised by a man named García. His parents died when he was young, and he used the García name until he was of marriagable age, which could be 15 at the time. In fact, he was using Montaño while Rita was a child. I can only guess that Rita really liked her grandfather, Mr. García.

[IA_Seth]

14. My family...

My family's name changed during the war of 1812. There were 4 brothers (one of whom was an ancestor) who had parents still living in England. These brothers were all military men, 2 of which were higher-ish officers, and their father was also a military man in England. During the war the brothers were denounced by their English family and as an act of defiance they all changed the spelling of our name to its current, more phonetically-correct (is that a word?), spelling.

So it happens!

[fudge stripe cookays]

16. That's so cool!

Why don't WE have stories like that!!

[CountAllVotes]

17. actually *ding ding*

Your post brought back an old memory.

When I was a young child in grade school I had a teacher. She said, "My name is Mrs. Smith." After that she said, "Well, my real name is Mrs. Schmidt but when WWII happened it was changed to Smith being Germans were greatly disliked at that time."

Maybe that is why the name is different?

Or, it could be a crummy census taker that doesn't know how to spell and/or read and write properly.

Just a thought from the past ...

CountAllVotes

:dem: