Two spellings of a last name.

[C.Keyes]

My grandfather kept a hand written log of his family and it has come to me. There is an entry for a Holiday with an "i", however on Ancestry.com it appears that person is coming up as Holaday with an "a". The details are otherwise the same.

How do I enter/change those names in Reunion?

[Michael Talibard]

Re: Two spellings of a last name.

My grandfather kept a hand written log of his family and it has come to me. There is an entry for a Holiday with an "i", however on Ancestry.com it appears that person is coming up as Holaday with an "a". The details are otherwise the same.

How do I enter/change those names in Reunion?

Complicated. First, what do you mean by 'on Ancestry'? If this means proper source documents found there, that's one thing; if it's only on someone else's tree kept there, that's quite another, and I am always very choosy about whom to trust. There's a lot of garbage in circulation.

Another question is whether a spelling variant is maintained consistently within a particular branch of the family (go with it), or whether on the other hand it changes back and forth, maybe even for the same person in different documents (as happens with my Talibards/Talibarts). In this case, I use the commonest spelling of that place/time (e.g. Talibart in 18th century Brittany), but of course also record those variations in notes.

A further tricky question arises when there is reason to believe that a spelling change was deliberately made by a person during his lifetime. Then I tend to go with the earlier (e.g. baptismal) spelling for the main name entry, but you could argue it's better to respect the change.

[Ronald N. Gowe]

Re: Two spellings of a last name.

Many years ago a family story was that there were too many with the same family name so that my grandfather had added an 'e' to the last name. However, a careful perusal of the actual archive microfiche films proved that it was a great grandfather had done it, no reason given. The 1891 and previous census spellings were Gow; subsequent census spellings were Gowe.

[kmgenealogy]

Re: Two spellings of a last name.

Many years ago a family story was that there were too many with the same family name so that my grandfather had added an 'e' to the last name. However, a careful perusal of the actual archive microfiche films proved that it was a great grandfather had done it, no reason given. The 1891 and previous census spellings were Gow; subsequent census spellings were Gowe.

I have a story that is similar. Stroop family split, my GG grandfather moved to Pittsburgh, PA & kept the name as Stroop, as did all his descendants. His father and most of the rest of the family moved to Schuyler Co., IL. Soon, the census reports and other documents of many family members showed surname as Stroops! I have never found a reason why the "s" was added...no one knows. One of the IL Stroops moved his family to Oak Harbor, WA. One of his sons moved to Los Angeles, CA and dropped the "s". To each his own, I guess. It does make research that more interesting ... and mysterious sometimes!

[John Bayle]

Re: Two spellings of a last name.

I would like to propose what I think is an alternative to Michael's approach mentioned earlier. I think he was advocating having one name and choosing "the correct" name. That is not what I do. I record the names of the folks in my database as I find them, and am careful to document the place where I found each name variant. Then I select one of them as my preferred name and put that in the Name field of Reunion.

Then I put other name variants in the Alias/AKA Fact field, appropriately sourced.

For example, I recently wanted to add a person named Jean Bernier to my database.
He is listed in Jette's Dictionnaire Genealogique des Familles du Quebec on one page as "Jean Bernier". On another page of this well respected Secondary Source he is listed as "Jean-Baptiste Bernier". So which is the correct name? I don't know. Maybe he used both. Certainly if Jette is to be believed his parents called him Jean-Baptiste when he was baptized, but when he was married his name was Jean. I put "Jean Bernier" in the name field(s) for this person and put "Jean-Baptiste Bernier" in an AKA/Alias fact field.

[Michael Talibard]

Re: Two spellings of a last name.

I would like to propose what I think is an alternative to Michael's approach mentioned earlier..

I think your approach is excellent! But then I would, since it sounds very much the same as mine - we simply agree.

[theKiwi]

Re: Two spellings of a last name.

I put all the different surnames into the Last Name field like

Moffat or Moffett or Moffitt

then with sources to indicated where each spelling was noted from.

The main advantage I see of doing this is that when I publish it online, it is much more likely for Google and others to return a match when someone comes searching for only one of those variants.

Roger

[genealogist.lily]

Re: Two spellings of a last name.

I put all the different surnames into the Last Name field like

Moffat or Moffett or Moffitt

then with sources to indicated where each spelling was noted from.

The main advantage I see of doing this is that when I publish it online, it is much more likely for Google and others to return a match when someone comes searching for only one of those variants.

Roger

Three items in one field cannot be sourced individually. Reunion adds sources in the order they are entered, so you have to be careful with (Moff) at, ett and itt - to enter the sources in order "respectively". Wishing for fields that would let me add a source to each piece of data. First name (source A), Second name (source B). For now the notes field must suffice.

[theKiwi]

Re: Two spellings of a last name.

Three items in one field cannot be sourced individually. Reunion adds sources in the order they are entered, so you have to be careful with (Moff) at, ett and itt - to enter the sources in order "respectively". Wishing for fields that would let me add a source to each piece of data. First name (source A), Second name (source B). For now the notes field must suffice.

Of course they can. In the memo field something like

Source 1 - gave name as Moffat; Source 37 - gave name as Moffett; Source 49 - gave name as Moffitt

Or the Source Detail for each source can be used to indicate what bit of information came from that source.

Roger

[ttl]

Re: Two spellings of a last name.

Or the Source Detail for each source can be used to indicate what bit of information came from that source.

I use this method a lot, especially for date/place data that can't be separated as their own data fields and for full names that are developed over time (existence of person implied as father of children with last name from one source, father's first name from another source, middle initial from another source, middle name from another source, etc).

[C.Keyes]

Re: Two spellings of a last name.

Thanks everyone, I do use Ancestry.com and the different spellings initially were in another tree, however they were a cousin's tree who has the same family log as well as become the "holder" of all the paper my grandmother saved. I have been carefully examining the census sheets to see if the mistakes are poor spelling, penmanship or error of indexing. For my sanity I have kept the names as written by my grandfather for now but will start to incorporate some your techniques into my process. I like the idea of using source material because it make online searching easier.

I am discovering that much of what is online in Ancestry is repetitive and mostly the same sources over and over, but until I can set up a network of relatives and arrange some travel time to the locations it is a start. I also don't anticipate a database of thousands of people, my goal is to just organize the documents that have settled into my possession and present a system rather than a box of scraps to the kids. Maybe when I can actually go to some of the towns and dig through dusty archives it will be more fun.

I have discovered though through looking at census sheets carefully that some of the names on my list were neighbors of others relatives, which makes sense by it quickly locates more than one family with one census.

[Jeff89]

Re: Two spellings of a last name.

Then I put other name variants in the Alias/AKA Fact field, appropriately sourced.

How does one get the information in the fields under the "Fact" tab to show up in a report? I have an ancestor that had at least 4 different spellings of the surname. Putting the variant spelling in the Name source detail field resulted in a report with those variants next to the Preferred Name. Putting the variant in a Detail field in the Source attached to the person resulted in the variant in the source citation at the bottom of the report. I'd like to have more room to explain the variants and it seems to me that the only place to do that is in the Notes field.

In short, I don't know that I see any advantage to putting the name variant in an Alias/AKA field in the Fact tab. I'd appreciate it if you could elaborate.

Thanks,

Jeff