Slaughtering a Spelling: What's the real name?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Antoinette Marie Rossi on October 7, 2009 at 6:12pm

I did a search in the phonebook, online reference, in the census, and used only partial last name! When that did not work, I used only the first names and ages, occupations and whatever else I could use. There were some rather odd translation errors, from English in the census to typed into the index, which made it tougher to find people with ordinary names. The name Rossi was typed into the index as Porsi, and that one took me about ten years to find! Often, the last resort is to go through the whole town. In the case of the Rossi's, it was a very large city and I was lucky to find them at all! I now look forward to the 1940 census records, with more experience that will hopefully help me find those elusive yet interesting ancestors!

Permalink Reply by Richie C. on October 8, 2009 at 7:26pm

Antoinette,
Those sound like US records. What Lithuanian names are you researching?

Permalink Reply by Richie C. on October 7, 2009 at 6:35pm

I'm no expert, but I think one of the basics for tracing a Lithuanian name is knowing how it might be misspelled under the best of circumstances. Consider that ancestor "X" might have left Lithuania by train to Germany to catch a ship. Now the Germans might apply a Germanicized or Polonized spelling to the name. Our ancestor X might not even know how to spell their Lithuanian surname to correct the German shipping official anyway. Then ancestor X gets to New York, or Grimsby UK, or wherever. Now a whole new opportunity for error exists when an official who understands (hopefully) English attempts to work with the German ship manifest. Now the strange names get misspelled again. This doesn't even address the different spellings for single and married females.

Here is a hypothetical example:


Lithuanian Male: Jakutavičius
Lithuanian Unmarried Female: Jakutavičiute
Lithuanian Married Female: Jakutavičiene
Polish: Jakutowicz
German: Jakutowich, Jakutowitz
Russian: Jakutovich, Jakutovitz

The Lithuanian "J" is pronounced like a "Y", so upon arrival in an English speaking country, ancestor X might be named:
Yakutowicz
Yakutowich
Yakutovch
Yakutovitz, etc.

And that's without any shortening of the name, or changing up of any vowels.

Permalink Reply by Richie C. on October 8, 2009 at 7:30pm

Just for fun, here's a personal example of my great-grandmother. Her name was Jeva Sakatauskas and she came to the USA via Antwerp, Belgium. On her ship manifest which it took me YEARS to find, her name is listed as:

Ewa Sagataukeetch

The 'w' in her first name makes sense. Also the 'k' in Sakatauskas could easily be heard as a 'g'...there are Sagatauskas people as well as Sakatauskas people, and I don't know if they all start from the same name....but it goes to show how you have to just keep looking.

Permalink Reply by Linda Johnson on October 9, 2009 at 3:56pm

It was really hard for me to find the ship manifest for my family. I only knew the surname they used in the USA which was Yurgell and other spellings including, Yergel, Yourgel, Jurgel, Jurgell... I did a lot of searching and I finally found my husband's great grandmother and her five daughters. The surname was transcribed as Jurgelewiczene, which I now know is actually Jurgeleviciene. The "last residence" was also wrong, so I can appreciate what Richie and others have gone through!