Genealogy Chat

Nudge

Take a look at my name.If I had even a tenth of a penny for every variation I've seen(Not in the family history sense but just in the post I receive)I would be a very rich woman!

Take a look at my name.If I had even a tenth of a penny for every variation I've seen(Not in the family history sense but just in the post I receive)I would be a very rich woman!

I've got a few surnames that have different spellings over the years. My maiden name is Morrall, which seems to have become set with my 2x gr grandfather - who could write! Other spellings have been Morrell, Morell, Morrel, Morral and Morall. I have a Boler who I couldn't find until I look under Bowler - the registrar's choice, but the 'w' never stuck. Abbotts who lost and gained 'b's and 't's each generation, and Clarks who suddenly lost their 'e'. Literacy seems to play a big part in spellings. I'm glad I married a Smith, nobody ever asks you to spell it - but I'm not doing his tree! Helen

I usually make a note of the variants and keep them as they are written today. I have a problem with my grandfather's name - Laurence or Lawrence? No-one knew, not even him.

Odd, but I've only discovered two surnames that have changed once (Brownell/Brownill and Francis/Frances). Would be interested to see what others do with their names.

For my maiden name, we have no end of spellings but tend to record people with that form used by my direct family, but like Helen, making a note of how it was recorded in the found document.It seemed to depend on merely luck as to whether we all got double letters in the middle, or ended with or without an S. Have found fathers and their children spelt differently, that being different again to the child's cousin.

Jim It's your family tree so you must do what you think is most apt. I found out that my gt gt grandmother Ann Maling [as it says on her marriage cert] is in the parish register as Meling. BUT by the time of her son [my gt grandfather]'s birth, she is MEALING. Mealing also seems to be the name used consistently by the family on censuses, so I have put all records as Mealing, but made notes about how they appear in the original documents. I might add that they came from Gloucestershire and I haven't any idea how Mealing would have been pronounced - Maling, Malling, Mawling, Mayling, who knows! I also have Chowns as Chouns, but this is easier to understand. It is really only fairly recently that names would have been written down and therefore needed standardisation. It may not have been our ancestors who decided this, but officials who didn't hear properly!

What convention do you use with your Family History? I was always told to enter a name as it is found in the earliest reference (Usually the Parish Baptismal Register). This means that I have 9 different spellings of my surname in 12 generations. I can't even take my earliest as the standard because his father's name may have been spelt differently. I have a number of Cockbones in my tree, a Cocbone and a Cockbane. Since then they have migrated to Cockburn, but not in my tree. I have a whole generation of Widbys whose father's name was Whitby. Help me before I drown under a ginormous list. Jim