Which surname do I use?

I have a family whose surname is Hopewell or Hopwell.

With other families where there are alternative spellings of the name,

Jenny M Benson...

That's a useful tip, thank you. I hadn't noticed that you could do
that.

In view of the totally random way the spellings are assigned to this
family and because it simply a matter of including/excluding a single
letter, I think I will go with the idea (thank you, Roger Mills) of
using Hop(e)well for everybody.

I've usually found that one version predominates, especially with the
further one gets into the 19th C. However, there is no rhyme or reason
behind the variations with this family. Of about 12 children, about 4
are spelled one way on the GRO indexes and about 8 the other way. They
swing both ways on the censuses and the IGI goes with the (very
slightly) less popular version.

Using Legacy I can use one version as the "main" name and include the
other as "AKA". I could also manually override the default of children
taking the father's surname and give each child the name used on the GRO
birth index (where applicable.) But there is one girl who's name is one
way at birth and the other way at marriage.

Robin Haigh...

Of course it would be wrong to think there's a single correct spelling:
that's a modern attitude, which many people in former times didn't have. If
they saw their name spelt in different ways at different times, whether
literate or not, they had no objection: it was the writer's choice as far as
they were concerned. After all, different writers used different spellings
for placenames and for quite a few dictionary words as well.

We also have to bear in mind that we only have a small sample of spellings
of a name, and we don't know how it was being spelt the rest of the time.
For instance, if a succession of siblings went through the same school,
often more than one in the same schoolroom at the same time, it's hardly
likely they were taught to write their surnames differently, regardless of
what it said in the registers.

In fact the registers have no official legal status so far as names are
concerned, they aren't authoritative or definitive at all. There are cases
of a name spelt one way by the registrar and signed a different way by the
informant, in the same entry.

In any case, the surname in the GRO births index is strictly the parent's,
not the child's, so with a string of siblings you're actually looking at a
string of spellings of the father's name, as it appears on the certs.

With software it's more convenient for searching and sorting and indexing to
standardise on one spelling, and the easiest to standardise on is usually
the modern one, i.e. whatever the descendants eventually settled on. I'm
not suggesting that original records should be corrected in transcription,
but there's no point in worrying about correct spelling in the heading of an
entry.

How do other researchers deal with this sort of situation?

Kevin Ettery...

I usually record the person with the surname spelt as it should be (ie.
what it should be, not the various mis-splellings) and, if it is spelt

Frank Erskine...

Ah, but what _is_ the "correct" spelling? As you spell it today?

As I said earlier, surnames evolve and change over the generations.

different on particular records, include the reference to the record &
spelling in the notes. I've come across 6 mis-spellings of my surname (even

Frank Erskine...

That's fair enough.

found one of my families under ELTHEM in the 1901 census index), and have
found one of my surnames completely wrong (ABLE SHARP instead of
ABELTHORPE).

Kevin ETTERY

singhals...

OK, I'll be different. (g) Big news flash.

Anyway. Since the primary reason I keep my records is so I can find
people when I want them, I don't want to rummage around trying to
remember all 36 variations I have on one surname. I have therefore
routinely used the spelling current today in the family. I annotate
that this record or that spelt it however, but when I print an index,
they're all in one alpha run and easy to find.

I tried the other way for a year or two but decided life was too short
and my patience was shorter. (g)

Fenny...

My grandmother was a Falkner. This is commonly misspelled in census
returns and other places where the family don't necessarily get to write
it down. They are not Faulkners, so I never list them as such, but put
copies of the printouts in the file.

Similarly with the Macdonald/Mcdonalds on Grandpa's side. The birth certs

roy...

That, if I may say so, is a somewhat short-sighted and unwise approach. By not
considering all possible variants of a surname, you are almost certainly missing some
family members. Certainly, if you were doing a one-name study you would be missing a
great many candidates.

Graham P Davis...

Yes, I made that mistake when I first started, just over a year ago. My
great-grandmother was a Hulett and I limited my search to that name,
ignoring Hulatts. It didn't take long before I found three brothers who'd
had different spellings of their surnames at the same census and I realised
I had to include Hulat, Hulatt, and Hewlett.

I'm now using GRAMPS and record all the various spellings by which each
person is referred. I can also keep all the family within the same group,
even if their preferred spellings are different.

Fenny...

What I meant was that I check the census for the people as Mcdonald, but
if I can prove they are related, I list them as Macdonald, rather than not
looking at them.

When looking at 19th century census returns you cannot possibly know the reasons why a
particular name was spelt as it appears. Was it an enumerator's error, did he mishear,
couldn't he read the writing on the original schedules or was the person giving the
information illiterate or semi-literate and genuinely didn't know how their name was
properly spelt? All possibilities have to be considered and to ignore a whole set of
people just because the name isn't spelt the way you think it should be - with your
mindset of modern values - is patently absurd.

Spellings of surnames on BMD certificates are often wrong, too, so it can be dangerous to
accept those as gospel. An example - I've just completed some research for an article on
a particular person and one of the names that crops up in their all-Yorkshire ancestry is
OLDFIELD. On one birth certificate it is spelt as HOLDFIELD, the only example of this
spelling I came across. On all the census returns it is spelt as the much more common,
and more likely, OLDFIELD. I reckon the child's mother or father must have tried to
affect a posh pronunciation when giving the information to the Registrar!

Roy Stockdill

"There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about,
and that is not being talked about."

Oscar Wilde

say Macdonald, so I ignore the Mcdonald in the census.

Frank Erskine...

It can be a bit of a PITA, but surely the whole idea is to record the
histories of our families as they _were_. Names do change over
generations and it's important to document this.

Fenny...

But should we change them just because someone else writes them down
incorrectly. My surname is most certainly not Benson (sorry, Jenny, we're

Charani...

This is the point that Frank was making. There was no correct way of
spelling names in the past. It's a modern notion about what is the
correct or incorrect way of spelling them. If I'd stuck solely to the

Fenny...

You seem to have missed the point of my example, but I'm not going to
argue that my name really is Benson. My name is European, not English.
It has been spelled the same way for at least 200 years, since my g-g-g-
grandfather lived in Jersey. If I find out there was a different spelling
before that, I may decide something different, but it's a common enough
name in France, Italy and middle Europe. Just because English census
enumerators misspell it as Benson, does that mean I have to trace every
Benson to see if I am related to them, when I clearly know I am not?

Fenny...

As I said, if I find that anything was spelled differently before 1800, I
will make a decision what to do. But until I get over to Jersey to look
through the archives there, I will stick with the current thinking.

If your name was, for example, Kuhn - a German name, belonging to friends
of mine in Indiana - and had been written by a US census enumerator as
Koon because they didn't know the name, would you take the family
documents (eg names in the front of books, engraving plates etc) dating

roy...

I am afraid you have failed to grasp an important principle of genealogical research,
which is that you should record every occurrence of a surname EXACTLY as you find it in
an original document but then annotate the record with an explanatory note as to why you
think it is wrong and what you believe the name should be.

Of course you don't change all your records to accord with one misspelling of a
surname, but neither should you take it upon yourself to correct a perceived error by an
enumerator or some other official 100 years or more ago. If you do that, you are not
recording history as it actually happened.

Fenny...

I know what you're saying, but I'm still not going to enter my ggf as Emma
(Emmott) and my gggf as Louise (Louis) just because the enumerators and
transcribers did.

Steve Hayes...

My ggg grandfather was reco0rded variously as Simon Hays, Cymon Hayes and a
few other things, which I've noted in reference to the documents in which I
found them. But transcribers of documents also get things wrong.

In the example you give of someone called Kuhn recorded in a census as Koon, the correct
way to record this would be to enter the name in your records as it was spelt in the
original document, but to add a note saying something like "This appears to be have been
a mistake by the enumerator and the correct spelling should have been KUHN", thus making
it crystal clear that historically the name was entered as Koon but you believe this was
wrong. Otherwise, you are going to mislead a future researcher who may pick up your work!

Fenny...

In my software, everyone is entered with the name on their birth cert. I
keep copies of all census records in the file with the other documents for
that person.

Although the software makes it easy to track people, I am keeping all the
paper records for everything and not necessarily scanning all documents.
Future researchers will have a better chance of compatibility with paper
than with the possibility of unusable or unreadable computer files.

There is a saying that is impressed upon all transcribers of censuses: "An enumerator's
error is NOT an error." Which means that transcribers are told to record what they
actually SEE and not what they THINK it should be. Got it now?

Fenny...

If that were true of transcribers, I would find my lot without any
problems. Even I can make out the handwriting as being correct in many
cases, but I still have to search for other spellings to make up for
transcription errors.

Example - Census says "Island of Zante, Greece". Computer says "Zante,
Ireland". Doesn't help when you're searching for Greece.

So, yes thanks. I had it before. If only it were that easy.

Hugh Watkins...

still indexing and transcribing are two very different beasts

alternate names are essential

"as is" + [modern or standard version chosen by the editor]

trouble sets in when I have 3 or 4 spellings and only two fields :-(

Hugh W

Roy Stockdill

"There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about,
and that is not being talked about."

Oscar Wilde

back 200 years to be correct or let it change to Koon?

Lesley Robertson...

It depends what the family used. For example, my mother's family descends
from a french huguenot who moved to the dutch colony at the Cape of Good
Hope. His records in France, the Netherlands and on the passanger lists of
the Driebergen when he went to the Cape in 1698 spell his name as Pierre
Cronier. However, by the time his first child was baptised in 1710, the name
had been "dutchified" to Cronje - and so it has remained (although,
curiously, it's still pronounced in the french rather than the dutch
manner). All of the Cronjes in the world (and there's a lot of them!)
descend from Pierre - and it would be going against all of their history to
suddenly decide to spell their name Cronier because that's what it
originally was.

Steve Hayes...

And it's interesting that some that used phonetic spelling kept the original
pronunciation (another is Pinard that became Pienaar), while others kept the
spelling but changed the pronunciation - Du Toit, for example.

My wife's Huguenot ancestors went to Prussia, and their descendants came to
the Cape Colony with the German settlers in 1858, and it was interesting to
see that they married French right up to the generation before the ones that
came to the Cape, and worshipped in the French Reformed Church, with names
like Payard, Devantier, de la Croix, etc.

To think that my name really is Benson is incorrect and would mislead

Lesley Robertson...

One of these days we must compare notes and whether we overlap.
Mum's lot are all from the late 17th/early 18th century arrivals (including
one Khoi Khoi and several slaves from different parts of the VOC world.
I've noticed that on the ZAF list, it's often not whether you're related,
but how many times that counts!

Steve Hayes...

We have a Francina van de Kaap who was a slave of Pieter Hacker.

She had two daughters by Johan Christoph Breitschuh, who manumitted them, and
they spelt the surname Breedschoe, which is sort of relevant to this thread.

One Breedschoe girl married a Flamme, and their progeny married into various

mlou1173...

Hi Steve.....what does "manumitted them" mean??

Hugh Watkins...

web-search knows

To free from slavery or bondage; emancipate.

mlou1173...

Thanks Hugh.....that was a new one on me and I was too lazy to look it up I
guess!

mary lou

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[Middle English manumitten, from Old French manumitter, from Latin=20
man=C5=ABmittere : man=C5=AB, ablative of manus, hand + mittere, to send =
from.]
Synonym: emancipate

thesaurus
To set at liberty: discharge, emancipate, free, liberate, loose,=20
release. Slang spring. Idioms: let loose. See free/unfree.

but what Steve means I don't know :-(

LacusCurtius =E2=80=A2 Roman Law =E2=80=94 Manumission (Smith's Dictionar=
y, 1875)
When manumitted by a citizen, the Libertus took the praenomen and the=20
gentile
name of the manumissor, and became in a sense a member of the Gens of=20
his ...
issio.html

Hugh Watkins...

"Slaves were formerly manumitted by census, when at the lustral census=20
(lustrali censu) at Rome they gave in their census (some read nomen=20
instead of census) at the bidding of their masters." Persons In mancipio =

might also obtain their manumission in this way (Gaius, i.140). The=20
slave must of course have had a sufficient Peculium, or the master must=20
have given him property<<

Hugh W

Steve Hayes...

As Hugh has explained at great length, he freed them from slavery by buying
them from their previous owner and signing a formal document to say that he
was setting them free.

Hugh Watkins...

it was a new word to me too

I don't remember what dates and plces this all occured

hugh W

mary lou

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families, including McLeod, Creighton, Burnard, Mechau, and eventually reached
Huguenot families through Roux, Le Roux, de Ville and de Villiers. Others
included Haupt, Enslin and von Backstrom, and in Natal, Beningfield, Hickman
and others.

Lesley Robertson...

The only overlap I can see here are Roux, le Roux and de Villiers - plus, of
course, I have 10 van de(r) Kaaps from the late 17t/early 18th century
(about 5 of whom are direct ancestors, the others married siblings of my
line).
To keep this somewhat on topic for the rest of the group, I'll point out
that the surname "van de Kaap" is a good example of a shared surname with
very few related people using it. It was generally used for freed slaves
born at the Cape and for the children of freed slaves who were born at the
Cape. All of mine were female - some married fairly lowly (often german)
sailors but at least 1 (Ansela, b around 1660) is the founding mother of a
well-known family. Another indicator is the inclusion of an "exotic" place
in the name - Anthonie van Bengale was a former slave who owned one of my
ancestors, and my earliest known mitochondrial DNA ancestor was Helena van
Malabar (b around 1665 in India). Helena is another "founding mother".

Steve Hayes...

I don't think it was a surname at all, though of course it was the kind of
apellation that sometimes did develop into a surname.

It was used to distinguish slaves born at the Cape from those imported "van
Bengal" or elsewhere.

A lot of the Dutch immigrants were similarly described, of course - "van
Deventer", for example, though I have seen it spelt "van de Venter". Because
there were relatively few from the same place, these apellations were often
unique, and developed into surnames, and many of them are related.

But there were many slaves born at the Cape, and so "van de Kaap" never
developed into a surname. Our "Francina van de Kaap" *may* have had the
surname Adame, or that may have been another description.

Lesley Robertson

anyone looking things up. I can account for every since person with my
surname born in this country since 1847, regardless of how they have been
spelled in census returns. At least the certificates are spelled
correctly and agree with the family documents.

Lesley Robertson...

You need to keep track of any spelling variation, and make sure that you
check them when they turn up, otherwise you will miss something, both
because of fuzzy attitudes to spelling in the past and modern transcribers
problems with handwriting..

Fenny...

I do, merely because it gives me an idea of how someone else may have
misspelled it.

Lesley Robertson

Charani...

As you wish.

Looking for Dixons, on the other side of the family, I will check out the
Dickson spelling, just in case, because I know that it would be possible
that the name was spelled phonetically in a different way in different
places.

modern spellings on my lines, I wouldn't have got anywhere with some
of my tree/s. There are 22 variations of one and even today it's
frequently spelt "wrong" ie letters missed out, extra letters
inserted. There are 6 on another that I've discovered so far, 2 on
another. I haven't found any so far on two others. How about
PAUNCEFOOT: the variations on that are great fun.

mvernonconnolly...

Have you got the medieval latin version: Planco-pede!

Charani...

That's magic :))

Enumeration errors I wouldn't totally ignore, but transcription errors
are a different matter altogether.

not related), but if you were to take one 1851 census transcript, that's
what my g-g-grandfather is listed as (he is also listed as Louise, rather
than Louis). His grandson is listed in the 1891 census as Binse. This is
wrong, too.

Our name has stayed the same, the enumerators or transcribers just have
trouble with it because it's not an English name.

I try to record an individual with the surname they had at birth
registration or baptism, with notes as to, for example, siblings,
parents or offspring having different spellings, or subsequent
documentation such as censii being 'different'.

In the early days it didn't really _matter_ how you spelt your name -
most people were illiterate, and it's only in this computer-type age
that inexact spellings cause "issues" (problems!).

David J Grimshaw...

I can give you an example where a family has adopted a completely
different surname from what they where originally known under and this
happened between 1870 and 1873.
In 1870 Shadrac GRIMASON was born in the Portadown, Armagh,Ireland and
in 1873 he died as Shadrac GRIMSHAW in Coatbridge, Lanark, Scotland.
This was not the first time that a part of the GRIMASON family adopted
the GRIMSHAW surname and in some cases Brothers either kept the GRIMASON
surname or adopted the GRIMSHAW surname.
Yep a real jigsaw and no link to the GRIMSHAW family of Pendle Forest,
Lancashire, England as far as my research has found so far.
The above to surnames have been legally linked in Armagh,Ireland and
here in New Zealand by way of a probate will and Land deeds that a
clearly linked to a ships passenger list and a Government Land Grant.

IMHO It is mere folly to discount the spelling of the surname as your
ancestor may not have been able to read or write and even if they could
they quite often did not question the Authority of the Clerk or Minister
as they where the Official recording the event.
David

Roger Mills \(aka Set Square\)...

I don't know what the official party line is on this, but I have an ancestor
whose first name is Harriet or Harriett - i.e. sometimes spelt with one t
and sometimes with 2. In my records, I have listed her as Harriet(t) - which
covers both eventualities. Maybe you could change all occurrences of yours
to Hop(e)well?

Charani...

My HELPS family has one brother who was HELPS when he was born, HELPES
when he married and his first and third children were HELPES, the
second and fourth HELPS.

I manually overrode the father's name for two of the children so that
they are all shown with the name as it appears in the GRO index. The
father I've shown as HELP(E)S.

I'd suggest that you show it whichever way you feel most comfortable.

boseley...

I have the exact same problem, one family with 5 children all surnames spelt
differently, I keep the one on my birth certificate for myself albeit that
my grandfather's is spelt differently, and the ancestors I record as they
were spelt on the said record.

The reason is that in the past few could read or write so when a father or
mother had the child baptised or recorded a birth, it was the responsibility
or the priest or registrar to interpret the surname from the pronunciation
of the parent.

Many times I have wished that I was a Smith or Brown, but recently I have
seen the advantages of having an unusual surname when researching my family.

Record it as it was written and add a note of explanation.