Genealogy Chat

Thanks every one that got back to me, you have all been a great help. i will know what to do if i need help again.
maria

Try having ancestors with the surname Cattermole!
I went to the village where the family had lived for generations. the first spelling was KACKERMOULLE! It went on through the generations something like:
Katermull
Katermoule
Catermoll
Catermole
etc etc - there were about 10 different spellings, but as it was a small village and checking back through birth records & parentage I established that it was more than likely that they were all the same family!!

Its not just surnames which change over the years. My father was born Denis and was known and died Dennis - he gained an "n"?? I have no idea when, presumably, it was recorded wrongly at the birth registrations.

hi maria

i have a similar thing.

My mum's side of the family are Rhead's with the H but for some reason in 1794 one of the son's was Rhead while the rest of the siblings and parents, all previous generations I cna find are all Read's with no H.

I;m just very lucky that Rhead and Read are very local names!

All records of G G Grandad's family arrear with the same spelling after around 1875 but his 2 brothers both adopted a different way of spelling the same name.

Best not to get too precious about the spelling of names in your tree - our ancestors weren't that fussed. In fact, it's best to think further "outside the box" - some very bizarre forms of spelling seemingly different names have originated from the same medieval name.
And you think some of the transciption errors on Ancestry are hard to connect!

Don't get too bogged down in the spelling of names. There was no standard spelling of names until fairly recently. Most people were illiterate and wouldn't know how their name was spelt.

A tip for searching for your family, just use the first part of the name followed by a * (Sedg*). On most sites, this will find both names. On sites with a Soundex option, use that. The IGI does this automatically.

Surnames evolve over time. My own surname is spelt with and without an E and in the distant past the E was sometimes an IE or Y.

There were no grammatical rules the further back in time you go. Prior to about the mid 1800's, many people could or read or write. An official like a vicar or registrar would enter a surname the way they thought it was spelt.

Even if a person could read or write, it is unlikely do to social conventions that used to exist they would dare tell an official, (or one of their betters), they have spelt their name wrong.

Hi, often the names were written down by other people,they wrote down what they heard. As a lot of people could not read,they had no idea how their name should be spelt.
Eileen

They could be....I have 4 different spellings of Bevan going though my tree all direct descendants

My maiden name was Sedgbeer, it was not until i was doing my family tree i found out it was spelt sedgebeer with an E and the rest of my family is spelt with out, so now i am doing my tree i am finding out there are sedgbeers spelt some with the E and some without, would the sedgbeer with out the E be related to the sedgebeer with the E, or was the E dropped years back? or are they different?
would like a bit of help?
thanks maria