Genealogy Chat

See below in a min

Help! Feel a bit confused. I'll try and explain as simple as possible: Hubby's grandmother, Elizabeth Mary Ann Nelmes, registered in Swindon, 1915. Mother's maiden name on indexes given as EARWICKER (and the same for her siblings) Elizabeth's mother was ALICE JANET EARWICKER - Born 1875, Bath - I have her birth certificate. Father,George EARWICKER, Mother, Mary Ann EARWICKER, formerly Mitchell. Have also found Alice's 1st marriage on freebmd in 1899, again transcribed as EARWICKER. I also have her second marriage certificate, states her correctly as 'widow' but doesn't show her maiden name in usual way for some odd reason, although she uses EARWICKER as her middle name, and also names George as her father. Have found Alice's parents marriage in 1863 but he is calling himself EARWAKER (also have cert) He names father as Henry EARWAKER. All earlier entries for the family seem to be transcribed as Earwaker, eg births & deaths registered. How will I know what the true name is? I believe it was probably Earwaker. Why would George call himself Earwaker at his marriage but then register his children as Earwickers? Most important to me though is this. How do I put them onto my tree? Do I put those registered as Earwickers as so and the Earwakers as Earwakers? Hope I'm making some sense! Also, on the marriage cert of George Earwaker and Mary Ann Mitchell in 1863, Mary has clearly signed her own name (I've got register office copy) but on her daughters birth cert in 1875, it's X the mark of...... Sorry it's long, I've probably put you all off now! Helen x

Basically he learned to read, write or spell! Until you can read what someone has written, how do you know it is right?

helen i know the feeling, i have a marriage certificate that states the name of person marrying as LUDEVIG SHAEFF , at the bottom where is says 'this marriage was solminized by us' his name is spelt LUDVIEG SCHIAIFF, and to make it worse his father Conrad's surname is spelt SHAFF, so thats 2 different spellings of ludweig and 3 different spellings of Schaff on the one certificate!!!! perhaps who ever was registering the marriage should have learnt to read! lol

Earwaker and Earwicker sound alike, so if someone new was coming to record the info the spelling would change. I tend to put everyone down as what there birth certificate says. I have one family that change from Torney ---> Tornay ---> Tournay ---> Tourney, but it can be spelt Tournai or Tournei. Bud names that sound alike can be Tirney, Toeney and all sorts of weird names. The spelling was not important all those years ago when people couldn't spell, so the choice of spelling is up to you.

Thanks for the replies. Webster - I thought I had a problem - mine's nothing compared to yours!!!! What a nightmare but I suppose you have to smile!! Lunar - Thanks Lunar. I'll just put it down to a name that changes over time - like you've suggested I'll put them down as whatever their birth certificate states, so I'll just have the one family with two different spelling variation, that's all. I wouldn't want to just use the one name, I wouldn't feel right. Anyone any ideas as to why Mum would sign her marriage cert in 1863 but not her daughters birth cert in 1875? Cheers again Helen x

Hi Chris, Yep, I think I like your theory. The registrar probably 'assumed' she couldn't write.......unless she'd hurt her hand I suppose... We'll never know though eh? Cheers Helen x

Variations in spellings of surnames can really put you off the scent!!! I spent months looking for a marriage in my Gaunt family and only found it after buying a birth certificate for one of the children and looking under the mother's maiden name. In the bride's parish where the marriage took place, the clerk had named all the Gaunts as Gont!! When I looked down the list of other entries, some of the spellings of other quite ordinary names were unbelievable. I would have thought that one of the requirements of being a parish clerk would be to have at least a basic grasp of spelling!!

Hi Angela, Yep they do make it hard for us don't they? I'd expect more from a Parish Clerk! Oh well - it all adds to the fun of it so to speak! Helen x

It is important to remember that until the Education Act of 1875, there was NO standardised spelling of English. There was, therefore, no right or wrong way of spelling a name, or any other word, for that matter. This has nothing to do with whether or not your ancestors were educated, nor whether the scribe was educated - your surname was how it sounded. One of my ancestors was a Churchwarden in the early 1800s for eight years, and in that time he signed the PRs with five different spellings of his OWN name. (On the other hand, Latin has always had a standardised spelling.....) Olde Crone

Following the same theme as the rest of the thread I would comment that 'Local Dialect' prior to to the 1920/30's was a major contributer to mis-spellings (if you can call them that) of our surnames. Below is a copy of an item posted in Jan.2005 Some of you younger one's tend to forget that only 50/60years ago many people left school unable to write anything more than their own name & dependant upon which part of the country you came from it was sometimes difficult if not impossible to understand the 'local dialect' if you happened to stray across the county border(indeed I can recall in the days of my youth cycling through a village no more than 12 miles from my home being totally unable to understand the reply given when we asked for directions) Now if you project this backwards is it not understandable that jack brown gets transcribed as 'jeck broon' as that’s what the transcriber actually heard (many of us have experienced this in the changes made to our own name spellings in our researchs) we must all remember that 'local dialects' have been almost smoothed out over the last 30/40 year So i ask you to remember that the further you go back in time the more common (apparent to us) it is to find that 'dialect' used by the giver of information suffers in its transcription by the census taker or the verger