One of my multi grt grandmother's was named Andromeda. Her name was frequently misspelled. Her headstone is even misspelled it reads Endrumeda. Maybe that's why she went by 'Meda'.
This is a great tip. Place names change spelling through time too. I have found it useful to change the location of an event to see if that triggers some hints. I also have gotten some great hits by substituting the official city name with a parish name from that town or village for wedding or baptism life events. I have found parents names that way.
Name variations are the most difficult hurdle I've had to deal with. I don't consider variations for the most part to be misspellings with one potential exception; names with an "s" at the end on census records. In such cases, I figure the census taker might ask who lives at a given location and are told something like, "We are the Smiths". The collective "s" at the end gets recorded when the proper last name is "Smith". I've seen that in a lot of research that I've done. Obviously, it isn't an absolute; in some cases a trailing "s" might be proper. It is just something to keep in mind while researching.
I’m trying to find the burial of my maternal grandmother 3 sisters in Georgia.Also my paternal grandfather blood mother.Your suggesting wildcards might help me on a sister with name of Phinella or Pernella .
I had hunted indexes for years for my Great Great Grandparents' marriage record, I happened to be searching for another marriage in the "F" part of the index when there he was - with the prefix "Mc" left off! I was also sable to locate the original marriage return from 1858! This is just one of many spelling errors I encountered in 50+ years of research.
I've often run into Ancestry saying there are no records unless I add a death date, and it says "even a guess" but there is no place in the search information to add a death date. A mystery I've tried to solve for decades is my 3x great grandmother Dovey (Hughes) West. The only mention I can find of her is her grandfather's will. Other than that, info passed down wasn't true. They didn't keep records of death in 1830s I guess. Seems like her children would have mentioned her but I've never found any mention of her. It makes me sad to think of her just being left out of history like she never existed.
I have several very unique Italian surnames in my family and I've lost track of the number of variations. A lot of it is from language barriers, different script hand writings, and transcription errors. There are so many that showed up on one census, disappeared on the next, and then showed up again on the following one. NYC released 10 million digitized birth, marriage and death records yesterday for FREE to download and print. I was up all night 😂 searching and there are some people missing there as well. I don't think it is fully indexed by name yet, but I am going to see if these tips work there now or in the future. Thanks for these tips!
The first variant anybody called Dieffenbacher should certainly try when looking for records in Germany should be 'Tiefenbacher', because Dieffenbacher is a variant, that was in use before the Grimm's Dictionary caught hold and told the Germans about their 'correct' spelling in the 1850's. And Diessenbacher should be looked up, too, because there might be a transcription-mistake with long or sharp double ss or ß. In German and Austrian records you get often first-letter variants like: D=T=Th (spoken vatiants of the same name, depending on the hearing of the priest that writes them down) B=P (pronounciation-variants) B=G (because the gothic letters look very similar, and people misspell it unknowingly in their transcription of the documents), V=U (because in the oldest Documents the letters are the same) V=W=B (W=B more often used in older documents from the 1600) V=W because of German+Foreign translation for example: Ventír=Wenter; Varesco=W/Baräschg or Valmezzo=Gallmetzer C=K=G (spoken variants C/K more often before 'dark' vokals like a,u,o and C/G-switch before 'light' vocals like e, i, but also ä/ü/ö, though there are exceptions) Creuzer=Kreuzer, Gessl=Kessl and there are always slavic names that start with CZ, that afterwards start with Tsch- or Sch-, or PL or ML that afterwards start with Wal- or Mil-, depending on the first vocal in the word. And what is extremely important with farmers, especially in Bavaria&Austria: If the file you use allows it, especially with documents of the 17th century: ALWAYS add the name of the farmstead as 'alias' of the family-name, because the farm-name is often used instead of the family-name, and illegitimate offprings of the farmer as well as children left by female seasonal workers occasionally take up the name of the farmstead they were born in, especially if their mother's family-name is unknown or they move away later. Additionally - if you happen to be an offspring of HRR-lowlife - there are also 'educated' misspellings used by new non-local priests in the 18th century, because some names to them seems 'too common' for church records, and they assume their subjects use base and to their ears often instulting 'slang'-words, and therefore they will change the name wilfully into a similar word they think less 'offensive', and it pays to posess a synonyme-dictionary for base job-descriptions, as well as a dictionary for similar sounding words. Victims of the same priestly fashion are girls-names like 'Lena', which might originally be a local shortcut of the aristocratic early french name 'Alinor/(E)leonore' and is changed into 'Magdalena' often in birth entries, while in marriages the same women are often called 'Helena' (probably whenever little Lena turned out pretty). The same happens to the female name 'Res' (probably meaning 'Rose') that is often given as fully spelled as (Euph)Rosina at birth and Theresia at the marriage, so don't be confused if there is no birth-entry to Theresia or Helena because the 'real' names were Lena and Res, and not whatever the priests turned them into. And only in the early 19th century priests took care if a girl was called Anna Maria or Maria Anna, in elder documents they do not care which name is written first, and the same woman ends up with 'MAnna' or 'AMaria', both names only exist in documents, because it is spoken 'Annemi/Amei' or 'Mariann/Marion', though in most cases a girl with Maria in her name ends up as 'Mitzi' or 'Muz', anyways.
Misspellings are a nightmare. I myself am of danish descent and my danish G G grandfather married a lady who was a quarter french. Her name has been spelt either as Ane or Anne - Ane is the danish spelling of the name and one of her daughters name's was spelt as Ane. But it is very possible that the wife may have been christianed with the french spelling.
It's just like a random place holder. Amy's video seems very self-explanatory. It will search for the letters you put in and any letter/s in the position/s you use the $ or *. It helps with many spelling/transcription errors.
In some card games, you can declare one card "wild." That "wild card" can be any card you want it to be. So if you have a hand where you need a 3 (for example), and you draw a "wild card," you say that wild card is a 3. The wild card in a search is the same thing. It's a special character that can then represent the letters in the word/name.
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One of my multi grt grandmother's was named Andromeda. Her name was frequently misspelled. Her headstone is even misspelled it reads Endrumeda. Maybe that's why she went by 'Meda'.
This is a great tip. Place names change spelling through time too. I have found it useful to change the location of an event to see if that triggers some hints. I also have gotten some great hits by substituting the official city name with a parish name from that town or village for wedding or baptism life events. I have found parents names that way.
Yes! We need to experiment with all of the different parts of a search.
WOW!! thank you so much!! This was so well explained! Putting into practice now! 🥰
Wow, funny!! My gg grand father was JOHN DEFENBAUGH!! So crazy researching this family name!! Thanks for the tips!!
Name variations are the most difficult hurdle I've had to deal with. I don't consider variations for the most part to be misspellings with one potential exception; names with an "s" at the end on census records. In such cases, I figure the census taker might ask who lives at a given location and are told something like, "We are the Smiths". The collective "s" at the end gets recorded when the proper last name is "Smith". I've seen that in a lot of research that I've done. Obviously, it isn't an absolute; in some cases a trailing "s" might be proper. It is just something to keep in mind while researching.
Thanks Miss Amy. Always good to have a refresher.
You're quite welcome!
Your videos are really useful!
I found my grandfather on the 1940 census, age 3. Only instead of son Noel Lee, he was listed as daughter Nora Lee!
Yikes!
Wow! I never knew this!
I hope it helps!
I’m trying to find the burial of my maternal grandmother 3 sisters in Georgia.Also my paternal grandfather blood mother.Your suggesting wildcards might help me on a sister with name of Phinella or Pernella .
I had hunted indexes for years for my Great Great Grandparents' marriage record, I happened to be searching for another marriage in the "F" part of the index when there he was - with the prefix "Mc" left off! I was also sable to locate the original marriage return from 1858! This is just one of many spelling errors I encountered in 50+ years of research.
I've seen that happen with Mc names and O' names. It's like they they didn't consider that as part of the name.
I keep a cheat sheet of all the ways I find that a surname is spelled. The wildcards help me figure it out.
This happened in my family. My grandmother's name was always referred to as 'McDonough' - but in fact on some records it appears as 'McDonagh'.
I can just about imagine how many ways that has been spelled in records over the years!
I've often run into Ancestry saying there are no records unless I add a death date, and it says "even a guess" but there is no place in the search information to add a death date. A mystery I've tried to solve for decades is my 3x great grandmother Dovey (Hughes) West. The only mention I can find of her is her grandfather's will. Other than that, info passed down wasn't true. They didn't keep records of death in 1830s I guess. Seems like her children would have mentioned her but I've never found any mention of her. It makes me sad to think of her just being left out of history like she never existed.
I have several very unique Italian surnames in my family and I've lost track of the number of variations. A lot of it is from language barriers, different script hand writings, and transcription errors. There are so many that showed up on one census, disappeared on the next, and then showed up again on the following one. NYC released 10 million digitized birth, marriage and death records yesterday for FREE to download and print. I was up all night 😂 searching and there are some people missing there as well. I don't think it is fully indexed by name yet, but I am going to see if these tips work there now or in the future. Thanks for these tips!
You're welcome! Language barriers definitely add to the possibilities of how a name was spelled. Certainly a challenge!
@@AmyJohnsonCrow Thanks for your work. Our family loves your channel.
The first variant anybody called Dieffenbacher should certainly try when looking for records in Germany should be 'Tiefenbacher', because Dieffenbacher is a variant, that was in use before the Grimm's Dictionary caught hold and told the Germans about their 'correct' spelling in the 1850's. And Diessenbacher should be looked up, too, because there might be a transcription-mistake with long or sharp double ss or ß.
In German and Austrian records you get often first-letter variants like:
D=T=Th (spoken vatiants of the same name, depending on the hearing of the priest that writes them down)
B=P (pronounciation-variants)
B=G (because the gothic letters look very similar, and people misspell it unknowingly in their transcription of the documents),
V=U (because in the oldest Documents the letters are the same)
V=W=B (W=B more often used in older documents from the 1600) V=W because of German+Foreign translation for example: Ventír=Wenter; Varesco=W/Baräschg or Valmezzo=Gallmetzer
C=K=G (spoken variants C/K more often before 'dark' vokals like a,u,o and C/G-switch before 'light' vocals like e, i, but also ä/ü/ö, though there are exceptions) Creuzer=Kreuzer, Gessl=Kessl
and there are always slavic names that start with CZ, that afterwards start with Tsch- or Sch-, or PL or ML that afterwards start with Wal- or Mil-, depending on the first vocal in the word.
And what is extremely important with farmers, especially in Bavaria&Austria: If the file you use allows it, especially with documents of the 17th century: ALWAYS add the name of the farmstead as 'alias' of the family-name, because the farm-name is often used instead of the family-name, and illegitimate offprings of the farmer as well as children left by female seasonal workers occasionally take up the name of the farmstead they were born in, especially if their mother's family-name is unknown or they move away later.
Additionally - if you happen to be an offspring of HRR-lowlife - there are also 'educated' misspellings used by new non-local priests in the 18th century, because some names to them seems 'too common' for church records, and they assume their subjects use base and to their ears often instulting 'slang'-words, and therefore they will change the name wilfully into a similar word they think less 'offensive', and it pays to posess a synonyme-dictionary for base job-descriptions, as well as a dictionary for similar sounding words.
Victims of the same priestly fashion are girls-names like 'Lena', which might originally be a local shortcut of the aristocratic early french name 'Alinor/(E)leonore' and is changed into 'Magdalena' often in birth entries, while in marriages the same women are often called 'Helena' (probably whenever little Lena turned out pretty). The same happens to the female name 'Res' (probably meaning 'Rose') that is often given as fully spelled as (Euph)Rosina at birth and Theresia at the marriage, so don't be confused if there is no birth-entry to Theresia or Helena because the 'real' names were Lena and Res, and not whatever the priests turned them into. And only in the early 19th century priests took care if a girl was called Anna Maria or Maria Anna, in elder documents they do not care which name is written first, and the same woman ends up with 'MAnna' or 'AMaria', both names only exist in documents, because it is spoken 'Annemi/Amei' or 'Mariann/Marion', though in most cases a girl with Maria in her name ends up as 'Mitzi' or 'Muz', anyways.
Thanks, Amy! I cannot believe I didn’t know about the number of characters for the « * »! And I was not using the ? 🙄
You're welcome! Keep in mind that each website handles wildcards a bit differently. (FamilySearch, for example, uses only the asterisk.)
Ancestry mistranscribed my grandfather's last name to WIECHE instead of WIEBE and had him traveling by himself at 7yo.
He was a very talented, resourceful child ;-)
Misspellings are a nightmare. I myself am of danish descent and my danish G G grandfather married a lady who was a quarter french. Her name has been spelt either as Ane or Anne - Ane is the danish spelling of the name and one of her daughters name's was spelt as Ane. But it is very possible that the wife may have been christianed with the french spelling.
She might have been christened with the French spelling -- or some other spelling altogether!
#GrizzlyTrueCrime
Nice, nice future
I don't play cards. Please use another analogy instead of "wild card" to explain.
It's just like a random place holder. Amy's video seems very self-explanatory. It will search for the letters you put in and any letter/s in the position/s you use the $ or *. It helps with many spelling/transcription errors.
In some card games, you can declare one card "wild." That "wild card" can be any card you want it to be. So if you have a hand where you need a 3 (for example), and you draw a "wild card," you say that wild card is a 3. The wild card in a search is the same thing. It's a special character that can then represent the letters in the word/name.
“Wildcard” is the name of the term used for advanced search techniques