What's In A Name?

1794 Petition of Jacob Burkholder

Do you have ancestors whose surnames were mangled in a variety of ways? Most of us do. Spelling wasn't exact prior to 1900 and clerks often recorded names as they heard them.

Often our ancestors could not read or write so they had no way of knowing if their name was misspelled.

In his 1794 petition for land, my ancestor Jacob Burkholder stated he arrived in Upper Canada (present day Ontario) in July 1794, and  applied for land 7 Aug. 1794.

He was recorded as Borghonder in records. That was a new one for me. I had seen the name recorded in other records as Burki, Borcholder, Borcholter, Borckholder, Borgholder, Borkholder, Burckhalter, Burckholdr, Burgholder, Burgholdter, Burkhalter and Burkholder.

Some of my other challenging names to search are: 

My Vollick family not only changed their name from Van Valkenburg to Vollick, it was also found in records as Valk, Follick, Volluch, Folluck, Valick, and more. 

How about my Rabbit family in Kent England? I've found their name as Rabbett, Rabbet, Rabbit, Rabbitt, Rabet, and Rebitt

Sometimes it seems more like Alphabet Soup than any resemblance to the actual name. But that's part of the fun of Genealogy.  What are some of your misspelled ancestor names?

Challenges We Face With Family or Pet Nicknames

This is Olive Tree Genealogy's latest article on Legacy Family Tree

Names are important in genealogy research. But names can be confusing and can add challenges for the genealogist.

I've written previously about about surnames that were changed, either deliberately or accidentally, over generations in 5 Tips to Help You Navigate the Confusing Maze of Surname Variations.

There are other surname variations that genealogists can find confusing and challenging. See Oh Those Dit Names!  and  Dutch Patronymics: Confusing or Helpful?

These surname variations can make research into those families challenging! But genealogical research can also be confusing when our ancestors used nicknames, or alternated between using their first and middle names.

Besides the standard nicknames that we discover as we research our ancestors, what other variant names might we encounter along the path of filling out our family tree?

Continue reading  What’s In a Name? Challenges We Face With Family or Pet Nicknames

Oh Those Dit Names!

1670 Baptism. Translation of underlined portion
“Jean, fils de Simeon le Roy dit Ody”
Jean, son of Simeon LeRoy dit Ody”
Image Source: Ancestry.com.
Quebec, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1968

A reader on my Olive Genealogy Facebook Fan Page reminded me of the problems genealogists can encounter searching French ancestors who may have used dit names.

A dit name is an alias given to a family. A dit name doesn't just apply to one person, but to many members and generations of a family.

A dit name might be derived from any of the following:

* A nickname
* A location of origin
* Land owned
* Name used in Army
* Various other reasons

I have an ancestor who settled in New France (present day Quebec) in the 1660s. His name was Simeon LeRoi. His dit name was Audy. So in the records we might find him as

* Simeon LeRoi dit Audy
* Simeon LeRoi
* Simeon Audy
* Simeon Audy dit LeRoi

The LeRoi/LeRoy surname underwent great changes, becoming LeRoy dit Audy or Ody, Audy and Ody in New France (Quebec), and Laraway (with variant spellings) or LeRoy in the United States and Canada.

Some of Simeon's sons assumed the Audy dit name as a surname and there are Audy descendants today who are from Simeon LeRoi.

At least one of his sons (my ancestor) assumed the Larroway surname when English speaking clerks in New York began recording the French Le Roi as LeRoy and eventually Larroway

Some descendants use the LeRoy surname.

It's a challenge to trace backwards but researchers need to stick to it and keep those name variations in mind (dit names, accidental name changes, deliberate name changes, spelling variations, phonetic misinterpretations, etc.

So keep searching and don't give up if you are faced with a challenging ancestor. Check to see if he may have been from New France at one time. Perhaps a dit name enters into your challenge.

But I KNOW My Great Grandma's Name! So Why Am I Stuck?

Many of us know our great grandparents' names. One of my great grandmothers was a Vollick. I knew that, and I had proof (baptism, marriage, census records)

As I traced her lineage back, I found the trail stopped cold at *her* great grandfather, Isaac Vollick the Loyalist. I could not find him in New York before he arrived in the Niagara area of Ontario with Butler's Rangers. I hunted in every resource I knew of, to no avail. There simply were NO Vollicks running around south of the border in pre-Revolutionary times!

And then I stumbled on a very generous lady who steered me in the right direction with a casual remark "Oh did you know that your Loyalist ancestor Isaac Vollick used to be called Isaac Van Valkenburg?"

Huh? How the heck did one go from being a Van Valkenburg to a Vollick??!!! But she was absolutely correct in her statement. The reason I could not find any Vollicks running around south of the border was because it was not a "real" surname! My Loyalist ancestor simply adopted it. I think he adopted it as a nickname "Valk" (Dutch for falcon) from Van Valkenburg (meaning town of the falcon in Dutch) which may be what his comrades in arms called him. And it stuck. It became an established surname and there are thousands and thousands of Vollick descendants running around in America and Canada today.

There are also Follick descendants - because some of Isaac's sons and grandsons became known as Follick and that surname also stuck. I believe this alteration was due to the German/Dutch sounding "f" for "v". So instead of hearing Vollick, an English speaking/writing clerk no doubt heard Follick. And thus another surname was born!

That experience taught me to open my eyes to the possibility that a surname as we know may have changed greatly over the centuries. It may have been changed deliberately as in the case of my Isaac Vollick, or it may have been changed through mis-communication or mis-hearing.

For example my French LeRoy ancestor (prounced sort of like Le Wah in French - it's difficult to render it in text) settled in what is now Quebec in the mid 1600s. When he moved to New York, his name started being recorded as Larua, then Larraway. No doubt English speaking clerks mis-heard his name when he pronounced it! And so it began to be recorded as Larroway.

You must have an open mind when researching ancestors. You don't know if they changed their names. It may have changed due to mis-recording based on language differences. Did they change it to escape a bad situation? Did they change it simply due to having an established nickname that took hold? Whatever the reasons, if you are truly stuck on an ancestor, think about possible name changes. You may need to develop an entirely new area of thinking and researching!

Dnyastree launches Surname Map for Canada

The following press release was sent to Olive Tree Genealogy by Dnyastree. I took a look and really enjoyed their new Surname Map for Canada. There's also one for USA and other locations.

New York, March 5, 2009 – Family network dynastree just launched the Canadian version of its famous Surname Maps. The free tool that shows the surname distribution of more than 600,000 Canadian last names is the perfect companion for surname research.

The Canadian surnames, mostly of English and French origin, can be searched for under http://www.dynastree.ca. The distribution among the provinces is shown in a coloured map,the user can choose from relative or absolute distribution. With the help of dynastree’s tool,the origin of surnames can be researched quickly and easily.

Dynastree is a fast-growing family network to build a family tree. Once the family tree is started, relatives can be invited directly to add knowledge and help to extend its reach.Together, family members can enter information on other relatives and ancestors. The communication with relatives and friends can be established and carried on even if the connection had been lost or if they live far away.

The Name Game Part 2

Continuing from The Name Game

But as we delved further back we found that during the Napoleonic years (early 1800s) the church records were now written in French. Still okay though as I took 5 years of French in High School and remember enough to read basic French text.

What I wasn't counting on was a brand new calendar! I had never seen this calendar before, it used different names in place of the months as we know them, and did not even encompass the same days in each month as we know them. So for example "pluviose" might be used in the date. I now know that "pluviose" covered 20 January to 18 February but I had no idea what it meant when we first found it used in a record we needed.

I've learned now that this callendar was started by the French in 1792 with Year 1 and it ended in 1805 with year XIV. It is called the French Republican Calendar Once we got back to those years in the Belgium records we were lost. We had to find a resource in the library that explained this French Republican Calendar, then try to read it in super-fast speed, understand it and then convert all the records we found to a date that we understood.

Okay that problem was solved and we continued searching backward. Suddenly we were looking at church records written in Latin! Luckily for us, I'm a bit of a geek and actually took Latin for 6 years. Unluckily for us, it was many many years ago and I really don't remember much except "nulli secundus" (second to none) and "veni, vidi, vici" (I came, I saw, I conquered).

I didn't figure that would do us much good in trying to read the church records. To my relief the Latin records were very brief and had words that one could easily recognize and convert to English. The names were "Latinized" with "us" added to the end of many of them, but still it was possible with some scrutiny to pick out the important bits.

We did find a great deal on Archie DeMeuleneare's ancestry. It wasn't easy. Reading the early handwriting was difficult. Translating clumsily from French to English, or Flemish to English or Latin to English was severe brain-strain and gave me a major headache. But we made Grandma very happy when we returned from Salt Lake City and created a book complete with graphics of the original church records on her Belgium heritage.

The Name Game

My husband's great grandfather Archie DeMeulenaere was born in Tielt Belgium. We didn't know much about him or his ancestors. One year we decided that a trip to Salt Lake City was in order and we planned to search for Archie and his ancestors in the Belgium records on micrfilm. At that time there were few, if any Belgium records online. Just recently Ancestry.com brought Wallonia, Belgium Births, 1580-1796 (in French); Wallonia, Belgium Marriages, 1580-1796 (in French) and Wallonia, Belgium Deaths, 1580-1796 (in French) online so searching is much easier.

Archie's surname DeMeulenaere can be pronounced and spelled in a dizzying variety of ways - De Millionaire, De Muelenar, and so on. So before heading off on our genealogy research trip we asked Archie's daughter (my husband's grandmother) to tell us everything she could remember about her dad - his date of birth, when he came to Canada, any middle names and so on. Nothing new was forthcoming, she knew only his first and last name (Archie DeMeulenaere), his date of birth (29 March 1884), born in Tielt, father Henry, mother's maiden name Blondell, brother Cyril (called Charles) born in September 1888.

We knew enough to know that Archie is not a Belgium name but we had no idea what the original name might be. We assumed (incorrectly as it turned out!) it would be something similar to "Archie" - perhaps Archibaldus or something like that.

On arriving at the Library in Salt Lake City we had to learn quite a bit about the Belgium records before we could begin. One important item was that Tielt is in West Flanders. It was a bit confusing for us at first, as we were not sure what language the church records would be in. Viewing the Belgium church records we realized we might be in trouble. The records were written in what I assume is Flemish - it was similiar to Dutch but it wasn't Dutch. That was okay though, as I can, with some struggling, read enough Dutch to figure out the basics of birth, marriage and death records.

We checked the birth records of the Catholic church in Tielt and rather quickly found Cyril aka Charles. He was baptised as Cyrillus with father Henri De Meulenaere and mother Maria Rosalia Blondeel. Next we began looking for other children of Henri and Rosalia, but in particular Archie born in 1884. We found 6 other siblings for Cyrillus, including one born in 1884, but Archie and no boy with a name that looked to us like it could possibly convert to Archie or Archibald in English.

Even though we did not think we had found Archie, we knew his father and mother thanks to finding Cyril's baptism record, so we continued our hunt backwards for Henri DeMeulenaere and Rosalie Blondeel's ancestry.

See The Name Game Part 2 for the rest of our story on searching the Beligium records pre 1850, including our encounter with the French Republican Calendar!

On our return back home we showed Archie's daughter our findings. The child we had found being baptised in March 1884 (on the same day as her father Archie's birthday) was called "Achillus Camillus". "Oh yes" exclaimed hubby's grandmother, "that was my father's real name." Turns out grandma knew his real name all along but didn't think to tell us....

To our N. American English ears the first name was pronounced "A-Kill-Us" so how on earth could it convert to Archie! When I told this story to my French sister-in-law, she laughed and explained that "Achillus" is pronounced "Aw-Shee". Wow, that sounds just like Archie!! And so the mystery of Archie=Achillus was solved. When Archie arrived at Ellis Island (New York) in 1900 he was recorded as "Achilles". Once he settled in Ontario Canada his new-found friends would have quickly converted his name to one they were familiar with. Thus "Aw-She" became "Archie"

Another mystery solved and over the next few days we did find quite a bit on Archie's Belgium ancestry. But it was not without a struggle and major headaches for me! You can read about that at The Name Game, Part 2

What's in a Name? I Showed you Mine, Your Turn to Show me Yours!

I've talked previously about surnames that changed (either deliberately or accidentally) over the years. This makes research into those families challenging! But what about first names?

Besides the usual nicknames (Bob=Robert, Jim=James, Cathy=Catherine) that we find as we research our ancestors, what other problems might we encounter along the path of our family tree?

How about ancestors with first names that have absolutely nothing to do with the name they were given at birth! These are people whose commonly used first name is not a derivative or nickname or anything other than some invented or pet name used by family and friends.

You can't assume that just because Grandpa was called Charlie that his actual name was Charles. Grandma might have been called Bobbie by her friends but does that mean her name at birth was Roberta? NO! Let me give you some actual examples in the family trees of my husband and myself.

My husband's grandfather was Charlie. Everyone called him that, friends and family alike. His wife called him Charlie. That was the name on their mailbox and in the local phone book. So of course we assumed his given name was Charles. But his birth registration found a few years ago showed that his actual first and middle names were Leon Thomas. How did he get the nickname Charlie? No one knows and he is no longer living to tell us. It's a family tree mystery that will likely never be solved.

My own grandmother was Dolly. As a child I assumed that was her given name but in reality her name was Ruth Ethel. When I asked her about her name she told me that when she was born she was so tiny that her mother thought she looked like a little doll. That was what her mother began calling her, and the name Dolly stuck with Grandma her whole life.

Other examples are my friend Bobbie whose brother could not pronounce her real name of Celia. He called her "baby" which sounded like "Bawby" and thus Bobbie was the name used by family and later her friends. It was many years before I learned her real name!

So don't get too stubborn about refusing to believe that the genealogy record you found for a man named Achilles is in fact your Belgium great grandfather Archie (another example from my husband's family tree) when all the facts fit! In this example, once we had the name Achilles pronounced by a native French speaker, we realized that it sounds like Aw-SHEE, which of course can easly become Archie. And thus my hubby's great grandfather Archie was indeed the man named Achilles baptised in Tielt Belgium in 1894.

Do you have examples of such names? Tell me about the names in your family tree, not common nicknames such as Jim for James, Bob for Robert, Bill for William, Cindy for Cynthia, etc., but pet names or invented names that you discovered for an elusive ancestor. Use the comment section here or write a post to your own blog to share your stories.

Global surname website launched

The Press Association: Global surname website launched

People interested in their family history can now find where their relatives have spread around the world by using a public website which maps surnames.

A team of geographers from University College, London, have used data from electoral rolls and telephone directories to map the distribution of 10.8 million different last names.

The information, which covers a billion people in 26 countries, shows amateur researchers just where different names originated and where families have scattered around the world through migration.

The online maps also have information on which of 6.5 million first names are most closely associated with different surnames and lists the top regions and cities for the presence of each last name.

The name tracer can be found at publicprofiler.org/worldnames