Merged LNAB Seidel or Seitel?

Question

I have proposed a merge of Hans Johan "Johan Niclaus" Seidel (seidel-764) and Johan Seitel, but a choice needs to be made on the LNAB to use before the merge can be completed.

Both profiles agree that his daughter's last name is Seitel, so I'm inclined to go with that name.

From my limited experience with German naming conventions, Hans is a nickname for Johan, so "Hans Johan" is just not right. Johan suggests that there is a second first name. I'm torn between "Johan Niclaus" or just "Johan". Since neither profile is reliably sourced, any name is just a guess, but I think naming conventions provide a clue.

Although his name is German and probably should be evaluated by someone familiar with German names, I also tagged "France" because he was from Alsace, which appears to have been part of France at the time. Which tag(s) should appear on the completed profile?

Comments

To save people hunting, here are links to the profiles:

• Hans Johan Seidel-764
• Johan Seitel-6

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Thanks for creating the links. I think I tried putting wikilinks into a G2G posting once with no success. I guess there is a link button in the page editing controls. I also thought that I had included one of the profile's id's as being referenced when I composed the original message, but that apparently did not result in a link to that profile in the posting. Lessons learned.

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Right, Randy. For a personal profile (the commonest case), you can put one WikiTree ID in the field called "WikiTree ID/URL if this relates to a person or free-space profile" on the Ask a Question form.

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To Hans and Johann. In many German areas Hans is used as short form for Johann or Johannes like Jörg for Georg. But in North Germany (Holstein) both names are normally used as separate names and you will find a lot of Hans Johann.

Answer 1

Hey Randy, this will be a bigger project I'm afraid. As for the name. Seidel comes from "Siedler" (settler) and therefor is more common in the eastern part of Germany since the migation in the middleages took place from west to east and the name "was created" where they settled down. But there is a little chance, that the name is Seitel, if it is derived from the medieval nickname of "Seyfried" which would be "Seitel". This would typicaly have taken place in the west, where this name was common. Unfortunately in the timeframe and region we are looking at, BOTH variants are possible, as you can also see at the name distribution map here.

So I took a quick look at the only "given" source we have, which would be the marriage of the daugther Maria Dorothea Seitel, as given in her profile. She was married on January 11 1724 in Langensoulzbach. I found the original entry here. It says:

Anno 1724, den 11. Jan. seind in der Kirchen Sultzbach öffentlich copulirt, Hannß Michael Haudenschild, weyl Diebold Haudenschilds gewesenen Schäffers zu Niderbronn nachgelassener ehelicher Sohn, und Anna Margaretha, Hannß Adam Ruchen, Schäffers zu Sultzbach ehle. Tochter.

Translation: In the year 1724, on January 11^th, got publicly married in the church of Sultzbach, Hans Michael Haudenschild, leftbehind legitimate son of the late Diebold Haudenschild, formerly shepherd in Niederbronn, and Anna Margaretha, legitimate daugther of Hans Adam Ruch, shepherd in Sultzbach.

So this doesn't fit from the names exept for the husband. Unfortunately I only then realized, that also the dates make no sense, since both bride and groom are sayd to be born around 1725/30 ??? So for now I am not sure if there is any evidence at all for this couple to be real. How far have we to go back to hit solid ground here?

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EDIT: I think the husband Johann Michael Houdesheld is ok. BUT there is a mixup with his namesake father. The marriage of the parents obviously is copied to the son. And we do not have any clue for the wife of this son at all. As far as I can see he might as well got married in America.

Hope it helps to fix this ...

Comments

This problem, or better a related one, seems to have been discussed earlier already. See here for reference.

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Thanks for the research, Danny.

The facts in the marriage record that you cite fit well with the marriage of Hans Michael Haudenschild and Anna Margaretha Ruch. Margeretha's profile includes information about the wedding that seems to echo your source, but which is unattributed. Michael's profile is unsourced (except for "first hand" knowledge). If you updated those profiles the change history would properly credit you for the addition.

I'm always confused where to put details about a marriage. It sure would be nice if the marriage itself had room for narrative and citations. I guess what I've done before is put details in one profile, such as the wife's (where it already is) and then reference it from the husband's. If anyone has a good model, I'd like to hear of it.

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Ok, I think I solved it. - As allways it is no easy solution. According to the papertrail both variants are right. In the books the same man was written as Seidel before 1727 and as Seitel after that year. I assume it is a problem of preference of a certain writer, since it seems to change with the handwriting. So in the end it is up to you to make a dicision. I would suggest to keep the spelling according to the birth date. I already put some sources in the profile of the wife Maria Dorothea Seitel = Seitel-1 so you can later merge the other one (=Seitel-5) into it.

For her parents I took the attached ones to keep thinks simple, so for the father: Johannes Seidel (=Seidel-764) should be the right one, I found his marriage with Barbara Dreher and sourced both profiles. The other father (=Seitel-6) could then be merged into it.

For the next steps of cleaning up the "circle-mess" of the Seidel/Dreher brother=husband problem I will do some more research next days to validate some things.

Of course this is only a suggestion.

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Great comment Danny!
The concept of standardised spelling is relatively modern. I can understand that "Seidel" and "Seitel" are minor variations - as first posted by George Fulton.

Answer 2

for what it is worth …

I looked in FamilySearch for records of Preuschdorf, for which some are available. Some of those available are index/extracted.

I did a search for Seidel and Seitel in records contemporary with the profiles being discussed. 

For Seitel there were no hits.

For Seidel, there were a few, including some with the spelling  Seydel.

In old German language records D and T can be interchanged. In some of the early registers that have indices, names beginning with D and T are sometimes indexed together. 

Answer 3

Hi Randy,
Some of my ancestors were Prussian and I have some thoughts about your question.

The recommendation from the Germany Project is to put all the forenames into the Proper First Name field. Yes, I know that the field descriptor is singular but Wikitree allows multiple first names.
The German naming customs are very different to the English. Someone might be given 3 or 4 forenames, then pick one to use. I would have guessed that the original baptism was Johann Niclaus. This question is not very critical. The forenames are easy to change later.

It is more important to get the LNAB correct. Purely on numbers I would have guessed that Seidel is correct and Seitel is a miss-translation. I am waiting for a native German speaker to give a better answer.