if an alternate spelling for ROMANOV is ROMAN then why does ROMAN not have ROMANOV as an alternate spelling?

Question

I / we Stoddard Paternal have numerous Romanov Romanovski Romanova Romanoff DNA matches , and Roman etc dna matches , trying to work out why , maybe via Stuart
 but shouldn't the alternate spelling go both ways ?

Answer 1

I don't really have an authoritative answer, but I suspect that any list of alternate spellings would depend on the data base you're looking at and how it is compiled.  If you search a particular surname in the WikiTree data base, for example, the alternate spellings often are not reciprocal, and I'd guess that is probably typical.  Some of those lists of alternates are made on the basis of soundex indexing, and that wouldn't necessarily be reciprocal.  In genealogy, as practiced here, we sometimes manually enter spelling variations as "other last names," but we only enter the alternate spellings under which actual records that pertain to the subject have been found.

So bottom line, I don't think you should really expect consistency or reciprocity in alternate spellings.  And in a list of DNA matches, where names might come from a number of different places, the variations might be even more mind boggling.  Just my opinion, until a real expert on the subject comes along.