TMG-L Archives

Archiver > TMG > 2002-10 > 1033523249


From: "myrnice" <>
Subject: Re: [TMG] Family NAME Change
Date: Tue, 1 Oct 2002 21:47:29 -0400
References: <200210010024.g910O1WI023951@mail.infinetivity.com> <4.3.2.7.2.20021001085819.00d21e70@pop.nycap.rr.com> <200210011106120020.00806AA3@mailhub.aros.net>


Stuart

This is fine for your document but what about someone who in the future is
trying to find the same document, maybe after it has been index on the web,
or some other means of indexing and the person that did the indexing is
using the spelling the way it exists on the document.

Myrnice

"Stuart Armstrong" wrote on Tuesday, October 01, 2002 1:06 PM
Subject: Re: [TMG] Family NAME Change


> 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
> mail to:
> web page: http://cgi.aros.net/~stuarta

This thread: