In my last post, I touched on my wife’s Batdorf family and how the name, over time with its many variations eventually became Potter for some of the Batdorf descendants in Virginia & West Virginia.  In this post, I want to give other examples of different family names that I have come across in the past, whether the names were subjected to changing over time due to the many misspelled, misheard, mistranscribed or mispronounced names found in records.  I also want to review how you can get past these types of research road blocks so you too can discover more about your ancestors.

Many of us have family ancestors that had surnames that were destined to be difficult to interpret, pronounced or transcribed just by the nature of the name or how a family member would say it through a thick foreign accent.  Although Miller/Mueller seems like a simple surname, many of my Miller family ancestral records can prove otherwise.

Here is a prime example:

Courtesy of Ancestry©

This is a record for my 6x great-grandmother, Justina Mueller present at the baptism of her son John.  Obviously the son was named for his father John (Johannes) Mueller, also present.  There are a multitude of these Tulpehocken Church records with the name Mueller misspelled as shown, and it took me a few years to find them when I started getting better at playing the name game.

Let’s take this a few steps further with some other examples from my wife’s ancestors from Virginia/West Virginia.  We’ll start with her Coleman family.

Here is the 1830 Census for Nicholas Co., VA for Seaton Coleman:

Courtesy of Ancestry©

With how light the image is, it’s easy to understand why errors happen. This is exactly how the image looks on Ancestry.

The original transcription on Ancestry states the name as Seylia Colman.  There has been 2 corrections made to this name…[Syton Coleman] & [Seaton Coleman].  This one wasn’t particularly bad, but if you are not aware of some of these misspellings, there are records you could miss, but luckily, Ancestry© allows users to correct misspellings of names.

Another good example is my wife’s Ensminger family.  This family name has some rather extensive variations that can compound the problem of finding records.

Nicholas Entzmenger’s Will:

Courtesy of Ancestry©

You can see the 2 variations (highlighted with the yellow arrows) of the surname spelled out for Nicholas as Ensmenger and Entzmenger in the above excerpt of Nicholas Entzminger’s will.

Other variations that I have seen are Entsminger, Enszminger and Intzminger.

Another of my wife’s ancestral surnames from Virginia/West Virginia that has had its own set of problems is Kious.  Jacob Kious (1781-1864) b. in Maryland and died in Fayette Co., VA (now WV) has had many surname interpretations.

Here is the 1830 Census in Nicholas Co., VA for Jacob Kious:

Courtesy of Ancestry©

Transcription mistakes are a part of the process for finding your ancestors and something we all have to work through. Again, with the help of users making these corrections, they provide help to everyone else that is related to a particular ancestor.

Here is the 1840 Census in Fayette Co., VA for Jacob Kious:

Courtesy of Ancestry©

Here is the 1850 Census in Fayette Co., VA for Jacob Kious:

Courtesy of Ancestry©

In this case, the first name seemed to be the issue, but looking at the census, the name of Jacob is barely legible and definitely looks like it could be read as Jason:

Courtesy of Ancestry©

Here is the 1860 Census in Fayette Co., VA for Jacob Kious:

Courtesy of Ancestry©

Again, thanks to the intervention of users correcting surnames, finding ancestral records has gotten a bit easier, but that doesn’t mean you still won’t run into issues trying to find all the records you may be looking for.

Here are some tips to remember…

After exhausting your searches for an ancestor with a problematic name, try using question mark(s) and/or asterisk(s) in lieu of certain letters in your ancestor’s name. When I searched for my Miller/Mueller name, I used a search criteria like this:

M*ler or M???ler

Try variations on the placement of the asterisk or question marks. The more you play with it, the better your chances are of finding more records for your ancestor with the problematic name.

If you are on Ancestry©, you can also use the pull down under the surname field when searching, use Sounds like, Similar and/or Soundex:

Courtesy of Ancestry©

Also, first names can have their own problems, like being abbreviated in records.

The abbreviations for the names Edward or James are good examples of this:

Edw. Or Jas.

Try applying this same principal to your ancestor’s first name.

There were also times when census takers only gave the first letter of the first name of each individual in a household.

Hopefully, these tips will help you be a champion of your ancestor’s Name Game.

Sources:

Ancestry©

Acknowledgements:

My wife Cheryl, whose love and support is everything to me.