Genealogy Chat

I was just wondering and how about.....

Suppose the various lads had got used to their spellings and had documents with their individual variations on and maybe the hassle of altering or the confusion of if they did was obvious and they were sensible about it. Is it also possible that they were remained illiterate and simply didn't spot that each spelled the name differently?

Ah, good thinking Jill. I am a member already, will get on to it!

Why don't you join Birmingham History Forum.

Brummies are great historians and often have a wealth of annecdotal information passed down and you might just get lucky with someone who can connect to them.

These are great stories, thanks for sharing!

But yes, I'm still wondering "why?". Eg why on the electoral register for Birmingham in the 1930s there are brothers in the same house, some Deeley, some Daley.

I'll Google some of the discussions going on.

Keep the mysteries coming.

I have 2 examples in my family .............. one will never be solved, the other is probably due to illiteracy.


First, one of my grandmothers was born Cotterill. That can be found in censuses and records in various spellings ........... Cottrill, Cottrell, Cottirell, etc etc

I assume these are all illiteracy related ............... and members of the family just went with the flow!



A grandfather was called Schofield, and I had the greatest trouble getting back to his grandfather. Finally, 2 of us connected up on GR and worked together to try to solve the problem ....... it took months, but we eventually worked out (and got the documents to prove it) that the family came from Yorkshire, not Lancashire, as previously assumed. And that the original spelling of the name was Scholefield.

This is where it gets complicated, like your family ..................... my gt gt gt grandfather moved to Lancashire before 1800, and his name immediately appears on parish records as Schofield, but some of his children were that and others were Scholefield.

In the next 20 years, all changed to Schofield.

In the next 10 years or so, 2 of them changed back to Scholefield ................ and those two lines remained as Scholefield.

Meanwhile, the Schofields, remained as Schofield.



The puzzle is like yours ......... why???????


I've thought of the accent problem, but it doesn't seem to be the answer.





sylvia

I remember a story told at a lecture many years ago. The researcher had spent years researching the surname Spode - connected to the Spode pottery family in Staffordshire. One of the family had disappeared and could not be found. All this person's research was done long before computers so all records offices and hard graft.

Wish I could remember how exactly he found the missing line but it may have been a penny dropping moment. The missing person had gone north in the direction of Tyneside where Spode had been transcribed as Spoward. And apparently he found the missing line.

So accents play an important part and it's always worth trying to work out how a surname might sound in various regional accents.

Of course don't try it unless you are by yourself. You don't want to appear to be nuts ;-)

Hi if you google both names you will find quite a few inquiries
About your two names

That makes a lot of sense, thank you

This is pure speculation, but if your grandfather and his brothers all joined up at the same time, the Recruiting Sergeant would have been confronted by several men, claiming to be brothers, with different names. I can imagine him saying "While you're in the Army, you'll be Daley", in the sort of voice you don't argue with!!

After demob, they probably chose the one they liked best, or reverted to what they were before.

Why they were different in the first place could well be mis-transcription of an Irish accent. My OH has one ancestor with several children, with at least four different spellings of the surname on their birth certificates!

As for you - I would use the name you are used to and everyone knows you by. Unless you fancy a change, that is.

I'd say that it is just as you say - they were illiterate and had no way of knowing if someone they were giving information to was spelling the name in the correct way.

It happens in most families. My maiden name was KILL and that has been transcribed as Kill, Rill, Hill, Kiel, Keil, Kile etc. etc. One branch of my family used the name Kiel to register births and deaths, even though they knew it should be Kill.

It's just one of those things there is really no answer to.

Kath. x

Part of my reason for tracing my family tree is that for years there was a story in my family that our surname should actually be Daley and not Deeley. My research has shown that indeed, my great grandad's surname did change back and forth between the two across censuses. The diver Tom Daley is my second cousin once removed - his great grandad Jim Daley and my grandad Henry Deeley were brothers. I've even seen electoral registers where brothers in the same household were using both surnames.
I recently acquired my grandad's WW2 army service record, and even on there he's listed as both, and even more intriguing, "Daley alias Deeley". So although the story is confirmed that, yes, we possibly should be called Daley, I still have never found out why.
The most believable explanation I've heard is that when my ancestors the Daleys came over from Ireland in the 1830s, because of the accent, their name was transcribed as Deeley. As they were illiterate, there was no way they would no it had been mis-written. Another relative told me that when my grandad and some of his brothers joined the army, they were told that they were Daley. Told by whom, I have no idea. I also wonder how whoever told them would know anyway.

I'm also perplexed as to why, after they left the army, did my grandad and some of his brothers revert to Deeley but other kept Daley.

I'd be very grateful for any suggestions as to why and how this may have happened. Particularly the army part.

Many thanks,
Craig Deeley/Daley (I don't know what I am any more!)