Every child of a couple has surname spelled differently in baptism records. Now what?

Question

I am looking at church records of Ellmendingen, Baden.

Matthias & Barbara have 6 children between 1699 and 1710 and the surname is spelled differently in every baptism record: 1699 - Leonhard, 1700 - Lienhardt, 1702 - L--harden (middle lost in binding),  1704 - Lyenhard, 1707 - Lienharden, 1710 - Leonhardt.

The -en ending is on both male and female child baptisms.

Matthias' own baptism in 1678 uses Lyonhardt

His father's marriage in 1669 uses Lienhard. Church records don't go back far enough to see his baptism record.

Later records of this family use Leonhard or Leonhardt. 

Do I really give everyone in the family a different surname?

Comments

Can only offer my sympathy. They seem to have covered every possible spelling.

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This is not a situation where different surnames were used, but rather a case of no accepted standard for spelling this name. If I were writing an article about this family, I would use a standard spelling, but would also provide transcriptions of the church records with the exactly spelling of all text used in those records.

Wikipedia has an interesting article on German orthography. An interesting topic is how names appear on German passports. In some areas of the passport, letters in names such as ä, ö, ü are used, and in other areas of the same passport, they become ae, oe, and ue. The issue in this case is non-machine readable (with the diacritical marks) or machine readable (without).

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Also "en" ending on a last name that does not usually end that way is the possessive case, like the apostrophe "s" in English and should not be viewed as part of the name. The feminine ending is usually "in" and appears only on last name of females.  Name variations can be frustrating but the best thing to do is go with what you find and add an explanation.

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Right?? Usually the spelling is pretty consistent until the handwriting changes, but not in this set of records

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I knew about the possessive, but did not expect to see -en for both male & female children.  Thanks.

Answer 1

The -en (or -in) ending is mostly used as possessive ending. For example a Katharina Schmidin who marries a Johannes Müller is actually a the daughter of a Schmid, so a Katharina Schmid. So in your case the Leonharden is the child of a Leonhard.

Answer 2

LNAB is as on earliest record, you can then add the last name as used in other last name box. They will be found whatever you search for.

Comments

thanks. It just feels weird when the earliest record of each member of a family group uses a different spelling 

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Agree that earliest record tells you which last name to use but doesn't necessarily set the spelling in stone.

If Mr. Smith's birth record is Smith and he has six kids and all are spelled Smith except kid #5 who is spelled Smythe because the regular priest was on holiday and the backup was in town, then kid #5 would be Smith also and Smythe indicated in the bio.  The exception would be if kid #5 signed up at school as Smythe and carried that name into adulthood.  If kid 5 was Smith in land records, we would use Smith as the LNAB and annotate in the bio the spelling difference.

Answer 3

The "at birth" thing is really just a guideline to prevent edit wars and help make decisions. I think this is a case where it makes perfect sense to just use a later but consistent spelling. I mean, if you spell them all Leonhardt, no distant cousin is going to come along and want to change them to Lyonhardt etc., right? So simplify life and pick a spelling.

Comments

I this is contrary to wikitree help pages.  See 

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Name_Fields#Last_Name_at_Birth

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As Jillaine says, this is contrary to the Wikitree guidance. Also, it's bad advice.

Yes, it seems sensible to pick a name and standardize. Published genealogies have done that for the better part of 2 centuries (at least), and most of us accepted those standardized names as accurate because we didn't know any better. But this practice obscures/distorts the actual records, and can prevent new researchers -- and sometimes even seasoned pros -- from finding relevant records. In Wikitree, that practice has led to the creation of numerous duplicate profiles. And don't assume that distant cousins won't object -- one branch of the family might think their name has been Leonard since time immemorial, and another branch might have the same view regarding Leonhardt.

The most straightforward way to deal with this situation is to record each child's LNAB as the name they were recorded with, and make sure that all of the known variant spellings are documented in the profile biography and the name fields (there's no limit to the number of names you can put in Other Last Names -- separate them with commas).

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I don't think this is contrary to WikiTree guidance, given the time and place of these births, and the lack of standardization in spelling.  There was probably a standard pronunciation of the last name, but the last name might not have been used very much.  The spelling was simply how the person writing the record chose to transcribe it.  I have seen a lot of old German church records where the spelling of the name varies with the handwriting, so it depended not on the name of the family, but on the person writing the record.  

If it appears the family all used the same last name at the time, but there was no standardized spelling, then just pick the "best" one and put the others in the other last names field.

For modern people where records are created at or near birth and used throughout the person's life with a standardized spelling, then of course the spelling from the birth or baptism record should be used.

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Now I'm a little confused as to what should really be done with those disagreeing about WikiTree policy.

Is the consensus to use the name on the oldest document found and then add the variations to the "Other Last Names" on the profile?

Or from the question use a common family last name and obviously still add the variations to the "Other Last Names" on the profile?

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Guidelines are just that, Louann, guidelines. As such, they are flexible and open to interpretation.

You are free to follow them "to the letter," to follow the consensus. or to use your own common sense (personally, I prefer common sense - same family, same surname, same surname spelling; within local contemporary conventions, such as feminine variations).

edit: forgot to note that these are my opinions!

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thanks. Hopefully I won't find too many other variations 

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As long as the names of all the children are the same but just spelled differently, according to the Help:Name Fields, it is perfectly acceptable to chose one (the best) spelling for everyone:

It is usually the formal name as it appears in official documents at the time of birth. However, it may not be exactly what appears in a birth record if:

• There was a spelling mistake or error in the document, or if the family name was more commonly spelled in a different way at the time of the birth (see the spelling conventions section above).

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Jilliane and Ellen: notice all the "fuzzy" words on the Help page ("generally", "usually")? They're there because there is nothing magical about birth records or the spellings found on them. (Leaving aside that this early in Germany, we're not even dealing with birth records, but baptismal registers.) As has been pointed out in many places, "at birth" is purely and solely a guideline. All else being equal, go with the earliest spelling. But all else is not equal here, because different spellings for each child creates confusion and disorganization.

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Ellen, choosing one of many documented spellings is not quite the same thing as standardizing the spelling, but in any case, I don't see how consistency in choices could possibly hinder research.

Another aspect to the question of spelling variation: when we write a dozen spellings into the various fields on a profile, who are we really documenting? If the variations come from the person's own correspondence, then I suppose it makes sense to formally record them all, but for all of those illiterate ancestors that most of us have, do we really need to know that much about the orthographic habits of their local clerks and priests?

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From the same Help page I linked to above:

Spelling conventions 

It's common with earlier ancestors that the spelling of a name was not standardized.

Nevertheless, if there are any contemporary written documents, the spelling from those documents should be used. In particular, the spelling that appears in a birth record should be used for the Last Name at Birth unless there are other documents from at or near the time of birth that inform us about a more common or correct spelling.

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Failure to document variant spellings can lead to mistakes. I read an article recently in a major genealogical journal that presented a significant reinterpretation of a particular family.  The article explained that earlier published work by a highly regarded genealogist was mistaken because that author had failed to search the records for the particular variant spelling under which a marriage was recorded. The overlooked spelling wasn't very unusual, and only slightly different from other spellings of the name. It's one I have seen in other records, but it's not the spelling that people have been in the habit of choosing when they give the same name spelling to all of the children in a family group.

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Documenting every single variant spelling can also lead to mistakes: the variant in the missing record could get lost in the crowd. (Simplistic example: FamilySearch doesn't consider Debrecen to be a match to Debreczen, even though they're exactly the same thing. If you have recorded the variants Debretzen, Debreczen, and Debrezen, then you may very well miss a record that's indexed as Debrecen, because in all that variation it may not occur to you to try with just 'c'.)  You can't blame that genealogist's mistake on the practice of choosing a single variant.

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One of the many reasons why you can't rely on FamilySearch -- or any other search utility -- as your source for genealogical information. And one of the reasons why I so frequently advise people here to record all of a person's name variants (both first and last names) in the name fields on the person's profile.

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I think calling FamilySearch a "search utility" falls under the category of Not Even Wrong. Just saying.

Answer 4

So glad to find this G2G feed. Between my husbands family and mine we have "A LOT" of German ancestry. One of the best examples I can think of for my husband is "The Parthemore Family" which has about a dozen variations on the spelling. So far I have found the German last names the most difficult to work with especially not being a genealogist or historian.

Greatly appreciate seeing the responses to this question. I've even marked this feed to save and follow.

Comments

Wait until you see Lithuanian names!  Between coming thru Ellis island and census takers 3 brothers ended up having different surnames which were used in the cemetery!