Bad spelling

[Michael Talibard]

May I ask for opinions on the vexed questions raised by spelling mistakes, especially of names, in official documents?

When three or four variant spellings of an individual’s name appear, I feel it is necessary to choose one for the main entry of that name - the one that will appear in the index and in prime position on the family card. It has been my practice for some time to opt (if I know it) for the version found on the Baptism or Birth record. However, this can get worrying when the official concerned is only semi-literate.

I have one example in my ancestry where the mayor of the town - one Yves Jarnet - seems to be a peasant suddenly thrust into public office by the French Revolution, from whose hand the phrase ‘ne savoir signer’ becomes ‘ne scavoire signé’; who thinks the word for twenty is ‘viens’, for child ‘enfans’ and that his country is ‘la republic fransoies’ etc.

So am I to list this child as he appears on his birth certificate: “Fransoies Felet”? It’s the only time that version appears. Before the Revolution, the parish priest was baptising members of his family Feillet, and when he marries 40 years later, he is François Feuillet. Of course, all of these are to be recorded in their place, but how is he to be indexed?

[theKiwi]

One method I use is to cater for varied spellings is to use a construction like

Moffat or Moffitt or Mophet

for the Surname.

This can look a bit ugly, but the huge advantage is that a search on the Surname field for any single variant will find the person no matter which variant is searched for.

If in the circumstance you're talking about the only use of the messed up spelling is that one document it could go into a Note, or an "Alternate Name" field, but if there's likely to be confusion in a number of places, and with names of descendants then having the variants easily findable in the one field makes sense - both for you, and for anyone else searching your data if it's published to the web.

Roger

[Al Poulin]

One method I use is to cater for varied spellings is to use a construction like

Moffat or Moffitt or Mophet

for the Surname.

Using a multiple spelling construction in the surname field seems an attractive solution to a problem that I find in many cases. In addition to this solution, or using a Note, or using an Alternate Name field, does anyone have other suggestions? I am particularly interested in how researchers of French Canadian families deal with the problem for the purposes of Reunion and the web. For publication, the common practice seems to be to normalize on one spelling, perhaps with an alternate spelling noted, and sometimes even ignoring the spelling on the original records.

I was born in a bilingual family in the state of Maine (USA, not France). My ancestry is entirely French, both French Canadian and Acadian. In the 16th through 19th centuries before widespread use of printed materials and formal education, parish priests and civil notaries were the principal users of the pen for record keeping. I believe they tended to phonetically spell persons' names according to what they heard. And what they heard varied by locality and time. One example is a family line where the surname was rendered as Guyon, Gyon, Hion, Héon, and Dion, predominantly normalized today as Dion. How does this happen? I recall older relatives speaking the soft "G" in "Gerard" with an "H" sound, and there is not much difference between a soft "G" given a nasal touch and a soft "D" rendered somewhat like a "dz".

[Karen Peters]

When three or four variant spellings of an individual’s name appear, I feel it is necessary to choose one for the main entry of that name - the one that will appear in the index and in prime position on the family card. It has been my practice for some time to opt (if I know it) for the version found on the Baptism or Birth record.


I do something similar, but I choose the spelling that was used the most for that individual, whether it was the original spelling or not.

[Normand Frenette]

May I ask for opinions on the vexed questions raised by spelling mistakes, especially of names, in official documents?

…

I have one example in my ancestry where the mayor of the town - one Yves Jarnet - seems to be a peasant suddenly thrust into public office by the French Revolution, from whose hand the phrase ‘ne savoir signer’ becomes ‘ne scavoire signé’; who thinks the word for twenty is ‘viens’, for child ‘enfans’ and that his country is ‘la republic fransoies’ etc.

…

Michael provides an interesting example that opens up a whole host of genealogy problems. It is not at all evident that the mayor of the town was a peasant suddenly thrust into public office. Nor is evident that the mayor was committing "mistakes". 'Ne scavoire signé' is a form attested from the Renaissance well into the 17th century. If anything the form attests to the fact that the author was, if anything, an erudite, because he had to know latin in order to transcribe in the way that he did. If later than the 17th century, he was perhaps a holdover from the ancien régime, railing against that younger generation that hadn't learned the 'proper' way to write French.

The other examples attest to a transcription of the (anglo)-norman dialect, a form that mimicked the speech of the French court and still found today in pockets of French Canada. It was only following the French revolution that that form was looked upon askance by the good Parisian bourgeois who were intent upon removing all forms of court speech and producing what some people today call 'Parisian French'.

In other words, the mayor wasn't making 'mistakes' because there were no mistakes to be made. The written language imitated the local speech, and it followed various conventions, some of them learned, as in the case of the 'scavoire signé', some of them popular, as in the case of the 'republic fransoies'. It was entirely proper for different localities to write differently for the very good reason that there was no one to tell them that there was only one way to do it.

For example, my forefathers in Canada were baptized Frenet for several generations. But for one generation a new priest, from a different locality in France, was assigned to the parish and the name in the parish registers changed to Frenay. Same pronunciation, different spelling. No problem – except for us.

Similarly, it was entirely normal for people to bear different names at different times and in different 'official' documents. I have a great grandmother Hénédine for whom I have found five different variants of her name — and all in 'official' parish registers.

So where does that leave us as genealogists and family historians?

First of all, with the recognition that the plurality of names and multiple variants of the same name are common occurrences. It is only in recent generations that names have become fixed and standardized as schooling and state requirements become pervasive. The problem is particularly acute in the generational transitions from the variable to the invariable.

My solution has been to use the baptismal name as Michael does as the first indexed name, with the various variants consigned to the notes and the 'final' 'common' name in parentheses. The parentheses help to mark the transition from one form to another.

But the history of names (and spelling and grammar) reminds us that there is never just one 'right', way to do things.

[Linda G]

I created a NameEvidence note field. In it I record the name exactly as it appears in each source (or what my eyes 'see' LOL) along with a source citation. I end up with a list, chronological, because I also note the year along with the name.

The 'normal' Reunion name fields reflect my current thinking/judgement. There are no citations associated with these fields.

For info about the evolution of the name, I would look in the note field. For complicated situations where I want to explain my reasoning or whatever to others (or my future self), I would write explanations (also with citations). Not sure where I'd store it--either at the top of the NameEvidence note, or create another NameNote. As you can see, I'm still primarily in evidence collecting phase. My brief 'assessments' (notes to self) are in the NameEvidence note and probably aren't that coherent for someone else's eyes. Later, for sharing purposes, I may put a more polished explanation in another note so it would be easy to include in a user-defined layout.

This does not solve the problem of creating lists or indexes with cross-references. It would be nice to be able record 'see also' names, so those xrefs could be automatically generated, rather than inserted manually later, if important to the Reunion user.

[Al Poulin]

My solution has been to use the baptismal name as Michael does as the first indexed name, with the various variants consigned to the notes and the 'final' 'common' name in parentheses. The parentheses help to mark the transition from one form to another.

But the history of names (and spelling and grammar) reminds us that there is never just one 'right', way to do things.

Merci, Normand!

[Michael Talibard]

'Ne scavoire signé' is a form attested from the Renaissance well into the 17th century. . .The other examples attest to a transcription of the (anglo)-norman dialect, a form that mimicked the speech of the French court and still found today in pockets of French Canada. It was only following the French revolution that that form was looked upon askance by the good Parisian bourgeois who were intent upon removing all forms of court speech and producing what some people today call 'Parisian French'. In other words, the mayor wasn't making 'mistakes' because there were no mistakes to be made. The written language imitated the local speech. . . But the history of names (and spelling and grammar) reminds us that there is never just one 'right', way to do things.
I am very grateful for these fascinating insights. I think this particular mayor (I have read quite a lot of his handiwork) is more a transcriber of the local dialect than a latin scholar. Norman French also survives in Jersey, where I live, and my next move will be to compare his spellings with those found in Jerriais. You are quite right to remind me that wanting only one correct spelling (of anything) is a more recent convention. Nevertheless, we have to privilege a particular variant of an individual's surname for indexing purposes within Reunion.