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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BORIS JOHNSON's 6 X GRANDMOM FOUND MUMMIFIED : AND THEY GENEALOGY PROOFED IT!

Geeeze,,,

I don't think I would want to see the mummified remains of any of my ancestors.  I would be lucky to be given a photograph of anyone that was taken in the 18th century. However, it sure is interesting to see someone else's ancestor mummified, like this woman who, because she became a mummy, is now being studied by science.  And it turns out that the archival documents were found and genealogy research conducted and because of her, and so very many others who procreated, we got Boris Johnson, once Prime Minister of Great Britain, he with the wayward hair.

Did she die as the result of a common VD,  contracted, as a minister's wife was visiting others who had the disease or some other strange disease contract it? She was treated with mercury, then thought to be the cure. Experts vie for the reason that Anna Catharina Bishoff died in Switzerland generations ago. And because she was from a wealthy family, both her father and husband religious ministers, there is even a portrait of her!

DAILY MAIL _ MUMMIFIED ANCESTOR OF BORIS JOHNSON DID SHE DIE OF A VD OR STRANGE DISEASE?

HOW TO DEAL WITH SURNAME MYSTERIES #5 THOSE ETHNIC SURNAMES and LANGUAGE CHANGES

Sometimes when you're trying to figure out a surname, maybe it's not coming up on a database at all, you think "something is wrong here."  There is so much on the internet it is indeed rare that a surname isn't going to bring up something. 

Sometimes looking at ethnic surname lists put up by a genealogy society or study group will help.

There are very many surname lists on the Internet, many of them focus on the most common surnames, which isn't helpful if the surname is uncommon.  

Some surnames have changed or been changed and some disappeared as the lineage died out.  

As previously stated, we want to find the meaning of the name in case the person moved countries and changed the spelling of their name due to encountering a new language.  Let's give a simple example, Smith.  Smith could become Smied = the German version.  Smid in Dutch. Forgoron in French. Kovacs in Hungarian. ... (Early Scottish explorers to California during land grant days, who married women of Mexican or Spanish descent on rancheros given by the King of Spain, Spanish-ified their surnames.)

But another example of surname change is when someone adapts the spelling to the new language - English - so that native speakers won't always mispronounce it or stumble over it.  These changes are not always clear and sometimes a name was Germanized or Anglicized in unexpected ways or another person, such as a census taker, wrote the name down the way it sounded to them.  One name that I found good documentation had been changed went from Polish in Russia to German in America.  The original surname had a first syllable Spi. It got turned into Spiegel.  Often thought to be a Jewish name, Spiegel means mirror.  I've also seen it explained to mean spyglass or eyeglass - it has something to do with seeing. The people who changed their name to Spiegel were Roman Catholics.

Using a Google translator may solve the mystery of a surname. Play with the translator with various suggestions, such as German, Polish, Slovak, and see if a meaning ever comes up.  Will it be a trade guild name, an honorific, or reflect the name of a place?

When you go into documents in the 1800's and back, you may notice that the same surname sometimes has one (s) in one version and two (ss), in another. You may notice that f's are used in the place of s's.

Example:  Andrassy.  Andraffy.  Dessewffy.  Deffewffy or Dessewssy.  (Hungarian nobility.)

Y's and J's can also be interchanged... Janko - Yanko (Slovak)

W's and V's interchanged.  Wager.  Vagner.  (Germanic or Polish)

G to J - Gyula - Julius (Hungarian)

Or let's take the evolution of a famous person's name, artist Andy Warhol.  The surname is found in Ruthenian based records in Slovakia and Poland as Warchola.  Varchola.  Warchol.  Varchol. and, finally, his version, Warhol.

Likewise, you may see a name and then it says something that translates to alias, aka, or "from the house of."  What is going on here is that the family's surname has changed because:

1) They just felt like it.  Perhaps to honor a relative or to take on more luster than the earlier name. A person who moved a great distance to where no one knows him or her could do this easily.  (Many a French courtesan during the Paris Belle Epoch days changed her name to indicate a noble past she never had.)

2) The male line died out and to continue it some agreement was made that the female line would continue the name.  (Check out the ancestry of Prince Albert II of Monaco and the family's history of dealings to continue the Grimaldi name.)

3) The name was changed due to an elevation in status by a King or other prominent person, perhaps because of excellent military service.

4) A clan of people, perhaps founders of a nation or early incoming tribes, evolved a number of surnames that over time were used by those descending from the tribe. The name evolves over generations.

5) Someone who long ago had a distinguishing feature such as red hair, thus being called something like Johnny the Red, goes for the surname Carmine or Veres. 

6) An illegitimate child goes by the surname of its mother, until the genetic father or the man who later married that woman informally or formally adopts it.  (Sometimes because people remarried quickly, a woman pregnant by a husband who died remarried and the child carried the name of the father whose house he or she was birthed in.) Or the child remains illegitimate (a legal term - in 19th century it means the child does not have right to inheritance from the father) but is recognized by the birth father and assumes or is given the right to the name. Or the child remains illegitimate, but the mother uses the father's surname anyway.

Surnames are fascinating!

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 #4 THAT HORRIBLE HANDWRITING

I recently found the signature of a great great great grandfather circa 1840's in Europe.  This man is missing from documents other than being named on the record of his daughter's marriage. He was likely born at a time when the records were not taken at that church. However, by paging through as far back as I could get in that same church book that has his daughter's wedding, not trusting the Indexing completely, and knowing the database does not include the names of the parent's parents or witnesses, I found his signature!  He was a witness at another marriage. I noticed the signatures of a number of different people in the witness columns - different handwriting from the priest's and other others - so I know this is indeed his signature and not a continuation of the priest's.  (And this is the from the original book and not the copy which the larger parish kept.)

Now I know he was alive to that point and that he likely lived in the parish since his daughter's record says she was born and lived there. I cannot find a death record for him.

Handwriting can really be a challenge, especially if you never learned cursive writing yourself.

The best thing you can do when you encounter terrible handwriting is, try copying this writing yourself on a separate piece of paper. Something about getting into the flow of the writing may help you realize the correct spellings.

Another thing to do is look for writing samples, such as in Google images, of different styles of handwriting.  Handwriting used to be called penmanship in schools, and conformity and neatness were emphasized. Children were given these examples to imitate. You might be able to find penmanship examples that extend to special letters that are language specific. Now here's the issue. Some of these specific letters fool an indexer, especially if they are American and don't speak the language of the records. 

I found a family in which the indexer spelled the name with an l. It was consistent on all the records for that town, and checking the originals, I found that they were being true to what was being written. However, in another town not too far away, that same surname had a t rather than an l. Apparently, there is what looks like an l with a cross through it in Polish language. Were they the same family?  Quite possibly.  I'll do family groups to see if the ancestors I'm seeking fit into any of those groups. ( I recently met a man who had bicycled through Poland last year who talked to me about this letter, and the pronunciation of it.)

A century ago, writers were dipping a feather or style in the inkwell. In order to dip and write, they often broke up the word.  (Which can make looking a word up that has one or more breaks in it difficult.)  Sometimes they break up the surname simply because it doesn't fit in the column strait across. 

Of course, sometimes you do find another patch of handwriting that is clear and neat and you are so thankful. These neat patches of information - such as how to properly spell a surname - inspire me to try and also have good penmanship, at least when I'm writing notes on my genealogy research! 

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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PORTRAIT OF AN OAK

NATIVE AMERICAN DNA TEST? SOME ADVICE !

YOUTUBE : JOE ROGAN SHOW -NATIVE AMERICAN DNA 

American Heritage with Shannon O' Loughlin....

***

She's Polish and Indian - the legal word for Native American - and asshe tells it tribal membership is not just about DNA...

HOW TO DEAL WITH SURNAME MYSTERIES #3 THE RATHER RECENT NOTION OF SURNAMES : AFRICAN AMERICAN - BLACK

Some people are telling me that using the term "Black" is now correct rather than African-American. Well....  all things being not equal...

I know that European-American is the equal of the term African-American but in the United States anyway, we have a very mixed society. I feel as if the term Black (or White) is actually general and assumes much based on a visual interpretation of someone's body. 

To learn what specific country or tribe one's ancestors left perhaps a DNA test is what to do. For today, using these tests, a person can say they are Nigerian-American... 

Using traditional genealogy, the find of archival documents, I've helped more than one person discover their American slave ancestors. But in one case we learned their Black ancestors were not slaves at all but were "People of Color" who came free and into New Orleans. 

We cannot assume that every person we encounter whose skin is of a darker shade has African roots, or if they self identify as Black, that they are of slave ancestry.  And as for Reparations, we cannot assume every person's roots were in Slave-America.

A person needs to ask themselves WHY they are doing genealogy. There are very many reasons why. If meeting people you are genetically related to is the reason, you no longer have to totally rely on documents held in archives. If you are preparing for Reparations, well I suspect a DNA test will be required plus the genealogy. 

African-American slaves...  on records in the United States, rarely are listed by names recorded in Farm Books or census. Slave Schedules on the 1850 and 1860 Federal United States Census offer statistics. But then, early census in the U.S. also only listed the head of household and statistics. Sometimes on contracts for buying or selling of slaves people are named. There has been some inference that when a White slave-owner does list the names, it is equal to recognizing those people as his genetic children. That assumption may be going too far. 

The Library of Congress has the largest collection of interest to those researching African slave ancestors. In addition, Slave Narratives, taken by writers employed by the Works Project Administration re President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, is held by many libraries. Recently on YouTube I found some RECORDED slave narratives! 

As for surnames, after liberation, some ex slaves did take the name of the slave-owner - the estate they lived on, without being genetically related to an owner...

But I think for the purposes of this post we need to go to the fact that most enslaved people did not go on record on U.S. census - and other documents - as having surnames until they were freed.  We have some incorrect notions about what happened when being free was official as well, as history and genealogy has proven this depended very much on individual situations, places and dates. We may know that slaves wanted to escape, wanted their freedom, and some managed to do this because of the Underground Railroad, but others had no idea what was next for them. Slavery was an economic system and the slave was tied financially to the slave holder, but emancipation did not always or automatically mean that the now free person was going to leave the homestead or plantation, not right away anyway. They needed to find viable employment and a place to live. To pack up and leave on foot on short notice to nowhere?

For many reasons people like to stay put. Our economic situation in large cities right now is typical.  Many people have become homeless because they can no longer afford to live where they have for years but they are not moving out of their home turf. They have no urge to leave a place they have become accustomed to, where they feel connected, where they know some people, how to get around, and where to find what they need.  

Not everyone wanted to leave a warm climate for a cold one. How do you know for sure that moving to a northern city will be a positive move? Point is, Emancipation came. The day came in which a person who never earned an income - or a viable one - but who had at least a rudimentary roof over their head, clothes on their back, and food in their stomach, was going to have to find some other way to earn money, a living, and pay for these things. Some slave owners did decide to go ahead and pay their ex-slaves or let people remain on the property. The Big Plantation existed but believe it or not most Slave Owners had only one or two and sometime the Slave lived in the house with the family.

As slaves did not have the right to property such as land or have money in a bank account until they were freed, the Freedmans Bureau created the first place for them to do that, the Freedmans Bank. Unfortunately, this bank didn't last and was only in operation for a short while.

The Freedmans Bank records I've used are rather limited, but I've found some valuable information in them because the person's name was unusual, or the person had not moved from where they had a bank account and were also on census. 

Freed people were told they could choose their own surname.

Though once enslaved, many chose the name of a President of the United States, such as Jefferson or Washington, though they were not slave owned by these men. 

THERE WAS NO LEGAL REASON WHY ANY ONE PERSON HAD TO ACCEPT OR USE a SURNAME meaning that members of the same family could choose different surnames or a person could try out a surname and decide on a different one. This is a research obstacle that one can sometimes not surmount, though I've had some great luck along with determination to find more information on people's ancestors who were once slaves. You may have to do some of the most dogged but incredibly interesting research that goes well beyond what databases can offer. 

I find that information held by churches can be valuable in this quest. Also carefully inspect death, birth, and marriage certificates for any notes that might have been made. I've found mention of a person's previous surname, not related to earlier marriage, in a few of these documents. When you find the name of a Slave-Owner or ex-Slave Owner, you may want to look for any legal documents such as land purchases and wills in order to learn more. Some of these landowners had land in more than one locality but, especially if they were rich and had many slaves, they may also be mentioned in local histories.

The African-American - Black way in contemporary times is to invent and create interesting and unusual given names, almost as if the surname is not so special. It's because of these given special names that I've been lead to some useful information. 

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 #2 THE RATHER RECENT NOTION OF SURNAMES : JEWISH

In the history of humans, the need for surnames is rather recent. 

We live in a world where just about everyone has two given names and a surname that, if a person desires a change, must be changed legally, which can be expensive. This formality and recent exactitude is one of the reasons we think that spelling the name as we know it to be when using a database, is the only thing to do. In genealogy though, in searching for those documents that proof our research work, we have to see it to believe it and here is a lot of missing information or inaccuracies to deal with. We have to make a judgement call sometimes on to accept or reject what we found and know why we did so in order to explain that process in our publication.

The use of surnames rose up with population increases, and the ability for people and governments to keep documents and often the decision a government made to start with demands for legal surnames has much to do with - you guessed it - statistics meant to be used to plea for funding or taxation.  

Handwritten records came first, of course. Sometimes only the educated - the priests and nuns - the nobles and aristocrats - went to school to learn to read and write. For some time the highest ranking people did not learn to read and write but considered this the role of scribes or servants. Then came the printing press, then the typewriter, then the word processor, and now here we are with computer.

***

By the way, those questions of the census' 'Do you read and write?' don't mean that the person was fluent or actually read much. Being able to sign your name might be enough to indicate that the answer should be yes. Remember that census may be the backbone of American genealogy but there can be misinformation on it. To this day no one is hooking you up to a lie detector or asking you to put your hand on the Bible when you answer the enumerator's questions. (And your landlord or neighbor may be the one reporting and not know what they are talking about!)

Unlike today in the United States, when we have education that is provided free and the majority stay in school through twelve years of education, back in the day it wasn't at all uncommon for children, especially children in agricultural regions where they actually worked from a very young age, to not go to school at all. Even a third-grade education was sometimes considered enough. The child would learn the basics of reading and arithmetic (math) and it was up to them to pursue advancing their knowledge in these basics by using what was taught. We had child labor, even in the coal mines. Even in the 20th century, some people made it through the eighth grade and then went to work, into service,  Becoming a live in nanny or a maid was considered good training for a girl who would become a wife and mother. Others quit high school to go to work and help support the family. 

Another aspect of education that is culturally significant for many of us is that there was a system of apprenticeships and trade guilds in place. A boy, usually not a girl though there were exceptions, would be taken underwing by other men, often his father or an uncle, to teach him the trade and a way to support himself and his future family. Now people who want to learn a trade go to a school and hope they can do an internship and then get paid employment for someone they are probably not related to. Factories took over so much production that was hands-on, such as leather work and the making of shoes, that there are not so many tradesmen left and the guilds have been replaced at best with Unionization. 

***

Surnames evolved and may not be consistant.

EXAMPLE

In Eastern Europe, Jewish people lived in their own religious culture, mixing with people of other ethnic people in the market, in commerce, and in other ways - certainly there were friendships - but generally returning to their own when it came to personal life and choices - such as in marriage and the practice of their religion. Within their culture, everyone who mattered was known to them, and the tradition was to identify a child by also mentioning the first name of their father or even simply using a nickname. So, your friend Izzy, formally Isaack, whose father was Yosef, back in the village in Poland, might go with the name Yosefowicz but in the United States go by Josephson...

It is common for us also to assume that 'Jewish" names are identifiable as German or German Jewish, but Jewish surnames were adapted by the country the person was living in, the dominant culture at the time. As an example, when some Jewish people left Southern Poland and went into Hungary, they Hungarian-ified their surnames. (And a note here that Sephardic Jews had surnames that are Spanish or Portuguese in origin.)

Sometimes taking on a surname had little to do with taking one of your own choice at all.  Surnames were sold and paid for in some places - and there might not be an extended family agreement on the name. If you had the money, you might end up with generations of your family being able to use the surname Diamond, Sapphire, or Ruby, or if you were a tradesperson (i.e. what we call Blue Collar now) you might go with a surname that reflected your profession - some form of Carpenter or Weaver or Baker, but if you were poor, if  you had no money, some person - an official  maybe a snob - might give you one of the free surnames that reflected your poverty and lowly position in life.  What a good reason to change your name upon coming to America!

Now that we know that we not only have to check the spelling for meaning, but also check the language for meaning, we might also realize that some people changed their names when they came to America for a new start. (The often repeated "changed at Ellis Island" is a myth both the official web site and I deny. I believe that individuals simply changed their own names for a variety of reasons, including ease, to put an end to the discrimination they had experienced in the Old Country, or to blend into the new culture.

Some people decided they just were not that into being Jewish anymore. I've met several researchers who found out someone in their heritage was Jewish along the way and without a DNA test which was surprising to them. Back in the day to be Jewish was to be Orthodox or Hassidic, not Reform, and sometimes a person just didn't feel so religious.

If you are doing Jewish research, you will also want to work with the Hebrew names granted children at birth, which are not the same as the public name the person used. If unable to read it yourself, you may need someone fluent in Hebrew to decode certain records and old tombstones with Hebrew letters on them often give up lots of good information. ***

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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*** A note here on my fairly recent Opinion piece about tombstone projects and allowing the dead and the alive relatives of dead people to rest in peace rather than have their information revealed on the Internet or in Databases.

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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DO YOU SLEEP LIKE A MEDIEVAL PERSON?

This may be a bit to the left or right of our subject but since so many of us have some form of sleep insomnia and there are so very may treatments for it, well, I've wondered if our notion that to keep our healthy we need 8 or more hours of uninterrupted sleep a night is just wrong!  Our ancestors may not have had the lifestyle or expectation that they would sleep the whole night through.  Perhaps it's not in our genetics to sleep all those hours.  Maybe some food or conversation or changing watch was the ideal. The term Biphasic Sleep means that a person sleeps, wakes up, and goes back to sleep. 

BBC FUTURE : MEDIEVAL SLEEP by Zaria Gorvett

Fascinating article from the BBC Future citing the work of Roger Ekrirch, a professor-researcher at Virginia Tech.

EXCERPTS:  For a start, first sleeps are mentioned in one of the most famous works of medieval literature, Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales (written between 1387 and 1400), which is presented as a storytelling contest between a group of pilgrims.  They're also included in the poet William Baldwin's Beware The Cat (1561) - a satirical book considered by some to be the first ever novel, which centers around a man who learns to understand the language of a group of terrifying supernatural cats, one of whom, Moue-slayer, is on trial for promiscuity.

But that's just the beginning.  Ekirch found casual references to the system of twice-sleeping in every conceivable form, with hundreds of letters, diaries, medical textbooks, philosophical writings, newspaper articles and plays.

The practice even made it into ballads...

... Ekrirch wonders if today people might remember fewer dreams than our ancestors did, because it's less common to wake up in the middle of the night...

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