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Archiver > TMG > 2002-10 > 1033491972


From: "Stuart Armstrong" <>
Subject: Re: [TMG] Family NAME Change
Date: Tue, 01 Oct 2002 11:06:12 -0600
References: <200210010024.g910O1WI023951@mail.infinetivity.com><4.3.2.7.2.20021001085819.00d21e70@pop.nycap.rr.com>
In-Reply-To: <4.3.2.7.2.20021001085819.00d21e70@pop.nycap.rr.com>


I "correct" names all the time, and I don't consider it bad practice. If they wrote Gallemore as Gallimore, Galimore, or Galamore, to me it is all the same. It sounds the same no matter how you spell it, and to me Galimore just happens to be the way they wrote Gallemore. The same document will very frequently spell the same name of the same person differently in the same paragraph. I classify spelling in the same category as handwriting. It is an _interpretation_ of the name. _My_ interpretation, that is. So I do not hesitate to record a name the way I want to spell it.

However, I do not intend to misslead my reader. I do record in the citation detail exactly how the name is spelled in the document, without comment. The reader can see if he reads the footnotes that I have interpreted the spelling differently than what was written. But there are many instances where the handwritten name is recognized not by the forming of each individual letter, but by the appearance of the name as a whole. The letters themselves are often slurred over, run together, scribbled, or truncated. So the name is more _recognized_ than spelled. And the recognition is an interpretive process.

So how does one interpret "Jos" with two squiggly marks after it and two dots under the squiggly marks? Do I go to all the trouble to try to describe the squiggly marks? Not on your life! Do I hunt for the superscript codes of my word processor and attempt to interpret it as Jos superscript ph? Even if the squiggly did remotely look like a ph, it is vain to think I can represent every scribble exactly with 26 characters. No, I just recognize that this is the way this particular scribe always wrote Joseph and I spell out Joseph in my transcription without even stopping to think about it -- and often without even being aware of it! It is my interpretation of his handwriting. If Wm is written in a way that is clearly the scribe's way of writing William, I write William. So Benj is Benjamin, Thos is Thomas, Jno is John, etc. If you don't agree -- sorry, that is my interpretation of the handwriting. It looks like Thomas to me. When I see Wm my mind instantly verbalizes William, !
because I know that's what it is. I can't even stop myself from doing that. Otherwise I would just have to trace it and let you figure it out.

I do not consider spelling of names a critical thing that needs much exactness. My justification for this is that most older records (and even some modern ones) do not themselves treat spelling in any critical or consistant manner. If it wasn't important to them then it wasn't important. What is important is to be able to recognize the name and distinguish it from other names. If I made a name tag for every way I think the name was spelled in the original records, there really are some persons in my database that would have twenty name tags -- and to what purpose? There are times when exactness goes beyond the mark.

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********

On 10/1/02, at 09:06, Joe Makowiec wrote:

>At 07:45 AM 10-1-2002 -0500, Mike Fox wrote:
>>I would like to change the spelling of the family name for a large
>>number of individuals. Could anyone tell me where to find the
>>instructions how to change all at once rather than one by one?

<snip>

>Why do you want to do this? There seems to be pretty general agreement
>that you should record names as they appear in your sources. What you
>might want to do rather than "correcting" the names is to add a (custom)
>name-std tag, where you put in the 'correct' or standardized spelling of


Stuart Armstrong
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web page: http://cgi.aros.net/~stuarta

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