HOW TO DEAL WITH SURNAME MYSTERIES #6 CHECK THE LAWS FOR LEGAL NAME CHANGES BY COUNTRY and DATE

HOW TO DEAL WITH SURNAME MYSTERIES  #6 CHECK THE LAWS FOR LEGAL NAME CHANGES BY COUNTRY and DATE

I found this interesting article on legal name changes in GREAT BRITAIN!

NATIONAL ARCHIVES UNITED KINGDOM : NAME CHANGES

Every state in the United States has laws on the books now about legal name changes.  Is it even necessary?  I think so because of all the other documents one needs to change that require proof.

Do your research on those laws when you think that a name change may solve a surname mystery!

This post is one of a series on the subject.  Click on the tag Surname Help - AWG to get to the posts.

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HOW TO DEAL WITH SURNAME MYSTERIES #1 PRO GENEALOGY TIPS FROM ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY BLOGSPOT

HOW TO DEAL WITH SURNAME MYSTERIES  #1  PRO GENEALOGY TIPS FROM ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY BLOGSPOT

Have you ever been blocked in your research because you just can't seem to find the person by the SURNAME you have for them in databases?

Transcription and Indexing projects can be helpful but when the original handwriting is bad or the pages are faded or water damaged or the indexer did not have a clue about the ethnic surnames of the heritage/country/language they are working with, it's frustrating. The indexer was well meaning but it can mean hours of confusion for you. There you are, trying to figure out if that letter is an l or if the giant G you see is actually a J, or a T is an F. Frustration that might not be so acute if you were spinning microfilm. 

I say this because I've tried to recreate years of personal research on some of the most popular databases and I can tell you that NO, I would NOT find what I did using microfilm coming up on these databases.  (And in one case the clue I needed wasn't even on a microfilm but on the BACK OF A PAPER INDEX CARD! - which no one noticed when they were microfilming.)

That is why we always want to go to the original source material and see for ourselves what the index or database has taken us to. (And why I fear the destruction of source material.)

An indexer had the chance to properly translate a surname.

You have the chance.

You can use the Internet to your advantage.

I'm sure you've had the experience here on Google of searching for a topic but forgetting how to spell the word or words. The suggestion Google's intelligent search engine came up with makes all the difference because it spelled it correctly for you.  IT OFTEN CAN DO THE SAME WITH A SURNAME.

(I'm also sure at least some of you have had the hideous experience of automatic word corrections doing serious damage to your message - your text.  (I know my defunct cell phone did that and I started to hate texting because of all the wasted time fixing the words to what I had originally intended; sometimes the message still somehow went out wrong.)

This post is NOT to tell you that you should sit there and loose hours of your life, feeling ready to tear your hair out, trying to figure out what an indexer did not, though trying those T's that are J's and C's that are G's does sometimes make all the difference.

So here is my first tip...

USE AN ON-LINE LANGUAGE TRANSLATOR first to see if the name as you have is spelled HAS A MEANING. The translators are not always all-encompassing with their libraries of words and meanings, but this is a first step. You may be surprised at some of the meanings. Perhaps your ancestor went through life being known as Mrs. Dumpling.  Or Mr. Bellybutton.

At the same time, consider that some names, such as Baker, have variations that are close to each other in various languages.

If the surname has a suffix and the translator is not bringing up a meaning, but simply restating it as a word, try that surname without the suffix.

Be sensitive to the suffix as a particular language's way of adding words that mean - of, son, daughter, or some other possessive. This may be your clue to the ethnicity and language of the person and a way of confirming that you're looking at the right documents.  Sure, in some parts of the world there was ethnic mixing going on centuries ago and you may find Italians in Hungary or Scots in Poland. The incoming ethnic people may have slightly changed their name to fit into their new culture.

AN EXAMPLE:

In Polish a ski ending infers masculinity or the father, the patriarch side of the family.  Ska ending infers femininity and the mother, the matriarch side of the family. However, the name may though time move into the ski ending.  Ski indicates eastern slav origins and Sky indicates western sav origins.  

Szke is a Hungarian suffix meaning the same. In in some families both were used or you will notice the suffix evolving.

Ski, sky, vich, iew, ow, dotter, all indicate that somewhere along the line, a person took the original root name and added a possessive.  Which means that you may just find the link between the surnames in a sensible way, because you find the name without that suffix.

The name with an ow suffix may mean  "The man from Krak"  i.e. Krakow.

You'll notice that some possessives indicate a relationship with a person and others a relationship with a PLACE.

When it comes to places and times where people did not have to have a surname because everyone knew who was who in their village or the subculture they lived in within the village, there are two ethnic groups I can think of off hand here in which surnames were recent and did not stabilize for some time, and there was no need for legal name changes.

More on that in the next post!

This post is one of a series on the subject.  Click on the tag Surname Help - AWG to get to all the posts.

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All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

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WHAT'S IN A NAME CHANGE - WHAT MADES ME MAD - PART THREE

Use the Google Blogger search feature to bring up other posts on name changes, surnames, and part one and two of this tome!)


Besides ethnic pride and the discovery of roots, another reason for name changes, both given and surname, that I've encountered is numerology.  In part one of this post on NAME CHANGES, I mentioned that it seems acceptable to change your name completely to have success in Hollywood.  Well, believe it or not, some of those changes included the possibility that changing one's "numbers" would be good luck.  Numerology is the study of how letters add up as numbers.


I've known people who take numerology seriously when naming their babies, naming a business, or renaming themselves, because they want a happier life.  Imagine if you will growing up with a name that has felt truly impossible.  You're wondering what your parents were thinking when they gave you that name.  If you're really going to start over with a whole new name, why not take everything into consideration, even if it turns out there's nothing to it?


I've known artists and writers who have a career or "brand" name different from what's on their driver's license, and sometimes it's just so they can hide their other self and way of making money from a boss!  (More difficult these days than ever to do.)


To me being able to make enough money and get past being in survival and subsistence and moving forward in your life is a great reason to change your name, and it doesn't imply that you're greedy, materialistic, or a jerk.


There's only one reason a name change is bad and wrong and that's when the intention is to hide criminal activity.


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WHAT'S IN A NAME CHANGE - WHAT MAKES ME MAD - PART TWO

(Continued - part one was posted about a month ago.)


I know of a Celtic /Irish American author who has been defamed by one biographer by adding a second L...


If you are researching a "difficult to pronounce or spell" surname, first, use on online translator that has speech capability or talk to someone of the ethnic heritage (that may mean contacting a Native American tribe or special ethnic research group), and get the SOUND of the name.  Write down what it sounds like to you.  Ask other people to write down what they think they are hearing. 


Use SOUNDEX to bring up names that sound like that.  (Be aware that Soundex (s) aren't perfect.  One is considered to be Germanized.)  Try to imagine what it might be to a German speaker who is a census taker.


Become sensitized through the use of SOUNDEX or database opportunities to bring up names that are close in spelling.  Though so many names are common, in particular names based on professions, that it doesn't imply descendants are from one massive family.  However, you may find that the name has changed through time as people you're related to moved from country to country.


When it comes to snobbery, I've heard many people criticized for have a van, von, or other prefix indicating land ownership, if not also nobility, before their surname.  Some families dropped this when they accepted the democratic ideals of the United States of America, but if your family was using it in the Old Country, then that's your name!  Remember that wealth and elite status then isn't what it is now.  They could have had inherited land but be broke.)


(part three coming!)

WHAT'S IN A NAME CHANGE - WHAT MAKES ME MAD - PART ONE

Over the years, in books I've read especially, I've come across negative commentary by various authors who are finding fault with people's name changes.  Its their way of insinuating negative things about other's personality, character, or psychology, and that makes me mad.  It's most often unfair.  When I come across that kind of criticism in a biography, I wonder how much I should believe that the author wrote.

Many people are not comfortable with the name they were given at birth and many people have felt compelled to change their surname due to the prejudices they've experienced - or just because they feel like it.  Take for instance the children of hippies who were, as a friend's son was, given a long Native American name when they were Jewish!  (He changed his name in college.)

It seems to me that drastic name changes that individuals or their Hollywood studios, managers, or agents, demanded are understood or forgiven as the means to celebrity and career success.  (i.e. Norma Jeanne Baker became Marilyn Monroe.)  But oh if a common person adds a letter, gets rid of the son, ski, sky, szke, or some other suffix, or gives a name a twist or a twirl to do so.  Sometimes this change is to make a name difficult to pronounce in English easier on other people.

I've talked about the Ellis Island name change as a myth at least once on this blog, but I've met a lot of people who claim that is where a drastic name change occurred.  Maybe that's even what their immigrant ancestor claimed, but more than likely, if the name change was drastic, then the person probably decided that to completely start anew they might as well.

Some immigrants came from places were surnames were fairly recent, where family members were not unified in what they wanted the family surname to be, or they had a Jewish name and an American name.  (Their documents from the old country would be more revealing.  Did they get on the boat with the same name they got off with?  Did they apply for citizenship with the name they used on the boat? Did they appear on a census in the Old Country with that name?  What does it say on birth certificates?)

Many ethnic groups had a very hard time getting viable work and income, and found that when they were out of work employers didn't even call them in for interviews - until they changed their names.  This has been true for decades.  In my time one family I know changed their five syllable Italian name, which actually was quite musical to the ear pronounced correctly, to the father's first name (i.e. Robert Roberts) and his whole career changed.  Another family had a German name that sounded like a sex act and their children were being teased on the playground.  Let's just say they changed their surname to Fox, and their pubescent daughter stopped getting harassed.  If a child is being bullied, maybe it's time for a name change.

Other people have discovered their ethnic heritage roots in adulthood and discovered that their surname has been slightly misspelled all along and go back to the original spelling.

(to be continued)


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INFORMAL and LEGAL NAME CHANGES

I once had a potential client that I decided not to work with because of her rigidity! 

Seriously, this woman was a highly educated and successful social worker of Jewish background with a very unusual surname.  My preliminary research based on the town that she said her family was from, but a town she was distanced from by three generations, revealed a cluster of this unusual name - with spelling variations.  SHE REFUSED TO BELIEVE THAT THESE PEOPLE COULD BE RELATED based on the idea that surname spellings never changed.  She was arguementative and I could tell that she would never be able to take the small leap of faith required and that I'd be fighting to prove things to her all the way.

The fact is that surnames have been very changeable through history.

African American slaves who were freed got to choose their own names.  Sometimes siblings all chose different surnames.  Did they do this formally and legally?  NO.  Assuming a name for some time is all it took - to be KNOWN by a name.  Some tried out a name, didn't like it, and went with another.

This is just one example of the flexibility or a surname.

Another ; I've heard the "They Changed Our Name At Ellis ISland"  so many times.  I don't argue it but this is 99% of the time pure bunk. They did process people quickly and we always have the problem of bad handwriting or misinterpretations of a name, but a mispelling or misunderstanding at Ellis DID NOT CHANGE AN IMMIGRANT'S NAME LEGALLY.  They did not have to go with a mispelling.  In the five minutes or so that they were processed, clerks were not changing the family name.  End of that old story.

Many people did decide to AMERICANIZE their surname, sometimes by spelling it different or spelling it more according to how it would be written in English.  Few went with legal proceedings, which cost money, to take off an ending, or ad or subtract a letter.  As a result, I have found so very many documented families with a wide variety of spellings.  In one family the name was slightly different on Ellis, on naturalization, or WWI draft registrations, and on census.  They were the same family though.

As I mentioned on a recent post, there is also the SPANISHIFICATION of certain surnames due to immigration. So, it's not always about ANGLICIZING!

STATE OF NEW JERSEY SEARCHABLE DATABASES : NAME CHANGES ENLIGHTENIING

If your research is PRE 1900 (or so) New Jersey, the Department of State of New Jersey offers some searchable databases on line. These focus on early colonial and 19th century records. I see a lot of availability and duplication of those records, but HERE IS A GEM! (Link above!)

Legal Name Changes, 1847-1947 may be of some help for researchers focusing on the great age of immigration. You'll find a lot of "ethnic" surnames made shorter or made easier to pronounce or gone Anglo here: Italians, Poles, and Hungarians doing major changes. Some of these however, may just be about adoption, divorce, or not wanting to be associated with bad news relatives.

https://wwwnet1.state.nj.us/DOS/Admin/ArchivesDBPortal/NameChanges.aspx

I love searchable databases THAT RESPOND TO FIRST NAMES as well as surnames like this one Also consider what an ethnic name in another language may translate to in English when you search. Francis, Franko, etc became Frank.

ELLIS ISLAND GETS UNFAIRLY BLAMED FOR NAME CHANGES

In my experience, the often repeated idea that the authorities at ELLIS ISLAND, the dropping off point for STEERAGE PASSENGERS in the port of New York for a long period during the industrial boom, CHANGED THE NAMES of those coming through is completely false.

MAYBE SOME ANCESTOR used this as an EXCUSE for their own decision to change their name. However this was absolutely not within the authority or practice of those harried clerks, most English speaking only, maybe some who knew German, who had a huge number of people to process.

On most ship manifests I've read I see that immigrants were often counted by ethnicity. That is to say, you see Poles with Poles and Hungarians with Hungarians, and Jews with Jews, per CLASS of ticket.

Having used both microfilms and databases I have read a lot of BAD HANDWRITING (which then gets transferred at the typists best guess into databases) and a lot of names that were given a phonetic spelling. I've found the same passenger's name spelled one way on the HAMBURG lists (the departure point of many steamships) and another on the manifests coming into New York. READING BOTH is a good idea.

I believe that mistakes were made with misunderstandings due to not knowing the language spoken or out of hurry and exhaustion. Further, I have seen these same kind of mistakes on census where certain assumptions were also made. For instance a child might be listed as "SARAH" because a parent called her "SALLY" when her real name is something else.

Given documentation and over time, the family always seems to revert to the given name, or is in agreement about a spelling or name change. The exception to this truism - and every case is different - is in African American familys shortly after slavery.

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