Multiple spelling of Surname

[Frank Zwolinski]

Hello,

I realize this has been discussed here, and I have read as many comments as I could find. In addition, I read the section in the manual titled, "Name Changes and Multiple Last Names" and that was also interesting, however I would be happy to hear how others have dealt with the situation.

One of my family's surname has at last five different variant spellings (that I know of), even within one generation, and I would like to list all variants and be able to search for any of them without having to remember which one is which. In other words, I would like to search on any of the variants and have all these associated folks come up. So, If folks have any suggestions, I would be happy to hear how you handle this situation with multiple names.

Thank you in advance.
Frank

[Michael Talibard]

I have same-family people called Olliver and Ollivier. In this case, luckily, the first five letters are the same, so I search for Olliv. If your variants don't allow that solution, you could try a more radical one (untried here but it ought to work). You could rename them all to be spelt the same and add each variant in brackets. Inelegant, I know, but…

[eric.vanbeest]

My basic premise is that the surname that gets recorded in the Surnam ebox is the surname (not married name) the person has at the time of death.
All other spellings of the surname are recorded as Facts / Alias-AKA - preferably also with a Source link to the document where this is mentioned (birth registration , marriage certificate, etc).

The reason for doing so is to minimize the clutter in the Surname box. Yes, I appreciate that that makes people harder to find - eg. you find a child but the father’s surname is spelled differently from what you have already - but for me that is a less of a problem than clutter. Plus, I have come to search for the _mother_ first because (at least in my tree) the irony is that there are fewer misspellings of the surname of women...

[Nick]

Soundex is usually the solution in these cases, although it won't work with names where the variants have different first letters. Reunion supports Soundex very well, and I use it a lot for my one-name study of the LAIDMAN, LAYDMAN, LOADMAN, LADIMAN, LEADMAN etc. families.

[Paul Reitz]

Nothing says all variants must be recorded in the surname field. You could add a unique note field for variants that contains all of them (copy/paste). To find them, search only on that notes field, and mark all hits. Then list those found.

That frees you to decide which variant to use as the surname.

My default is to use the individual's own variant, if known, then the most common version in the same surname field.

HTH!

[John M. Leggett]

Whatever works for you is usually best. But I'm wondering why you use name at death rather than birth name? I use birth name since it doesn't change but a person could have several different names prior to death.

[Frank Zwolinski]

Thank you folks for your suggestions. I will take them to heart as I make my decision. I really would like to search on the surname field without cluttering it up, so that will likely present a problem without using the soundex suggestion. However I am not sure which way I will go yet.

In appreciation,
Frank

[alan]

In my case, I have found about 24 different spellings of my surname "Ribbans", at the last count I did. I usually enter the way it was recorded/written at time of birth or baptism. When the person got married, the name often changed again so I then enter the new variant with the original spelling in brackets. I don't think there is any right or wrong way to record the names.
Alan

[kyuck]

I use the birth last name and include last name changes inside [square brackets]. This helps when doing Searches.