#spelling errors written to reflect spoken pronunciation

[whales-are-gay]

love when people pahk in the bike lane like thanks buddy youre right i guess i didnt need it let me ride my bike directly into your driverside door

[jennzer]

Week 15: “How Do You Spell That?”

In the photo above, I have captured two times that my last name has been spelled incorrectly (hint: it starts with a W, not a B).  And those were minor errors compared to some of the Starbucks misspellings I’ve seen.  There are many reasons that a person’s name gets misspelled, and my ancestors weren’t immune to it.  So here are four of the most frustrating spelling issues I’ve encountered in my research.

Anna Maria Feldhaus (August 3, 1819 - June 24, 1900)

At a time when most people were poorly educated or completely illiterate, Anna probably didn’t worry too much about how to spell her last name.  In his marriage record, Anna’s father Johann Bernard is listed with the surname Feltes.  Anna’s baptismal entry spells her name Feldhues while the register for her own marriage records Anna's name as Feldhouse. Only the passenger list from her arrival to Baltimore lists her name with the spelling Feldhaus (the version I have arbitrarily chosen to prefer).  In Anna’s case, spelling variations reflect an emphasis on spoken pronunciation over written accuracy.  When other people needed to record her name, they probably used phonetics to help them capture it as precisely as possible without much concern for “correctness."  For the most part, Anna’s perpetually “misspelled" name has not impeded my genealogy research because the soundex code for her surname is always F-432.

John Earp (1680 - 1744)

In the case of the Earp family surname, phonetic spelling “mistakes" have actually made the research a little more difficult.  Earp historians note that the name had many different spelling variations over time.  Because John Earp’s father was a recent immigrant from Ireland, he probably spoke with a heavy accent.  If someone spelled the name phonetically based on John’s own accented pronunciation, it most likely would have been recorded as Harp or Arp (listen for yourself!).  In fact, in the 1701 Maryland Early Census, John’s last name was indeed recorded as Harp.  On both his birth record and his gravestone, however, he is identified as John Earp.  Other spellings found throughout the history of the Earp family tree include Erp, Urp, Erpe, Yrp, Earpe, Aerp, Arpe, Harpe, Yarp, and Erps.  All of which translate into many different soundex codes and complicate the process of finding records.

Brandenburg

I truly think that the biggest challenge when it comes to my Brandenburg ancestors is the length of their Germanic surname.  Most records I have studied spell out the entire surname, although occasionally I have seen a shortened Brand. or Brand'berg.  In general, I assume that the longer the name, the more likely it is misspelled.  Many records add an “h”, “er”, “e” or even “s” to my Brandenburg ancestors’ surname resulting in Brandenburge, Brandensburg, Brandenberger, and Brandenburgh to name a few.  It appears that they all generally come from the same origin and simply represent different (mostly unintentional) variations.  Once again, it helps that all the variations have the same soundex code (B-653).

Clara Rothert (January 4, 1834 - February 1, 1916)

Clara’s surname and all of its variations represent the mixed influence of phonetics, accents, mistakes, and anglicization.  The first record I have with Clara’s name is the passenger list showing her arrival at the port of Baltimore in October of 1848 with her father, Frederick Rothert, mother, and two brothers.  On the 1860 census, Clara is married to Edward Plümer and they are living and working on the farm of Frederick Road, her father.  When Clara’s eldest son, Frederick dies, his death certificate lists his mother’s maiden name as Rhode, and by the time I inherit my family’s family tree information, it has been changed to Roday.  I still don’t know which variation is the “right” one, but I’m partial to the name written on her immigration passenger list.

What misspellings do you have in your family tree?

Resources: 

Learn more about the Soundex Coding system for genealogy

My family tree with blog subjects highlighted