Help with Norway merge

+5 votes
146 views
Can someone with Norway knowledge have a look at possible merges around Bentdalen-3 and Bentdahle-7. Not only is there the spelling difference but am not even sure that this is the LNAB I think it is the Married Name. This leads to a number of other merges that have sat around since mar 2013. These do look to be an obvious merge.
WikiTree profile: Mari Bentdalen
in Genealogy Help by Chris Hoult G2G6 Mach 2 (25.3k points)
retagged by Dorothy Barry

2 Answers

+7 votes

It's going to take some time, by someone with Norwegian experience, to trace the patronymics, farm names, and people.  The big thing to remember is that names were not spelled then, they were spoken, so spellings did not matter!  If they were written down, it was typically by a Danish cleric, who wrote them as he thought they sounded.  Marie's profile is an excellent example, with 4 different spellings of Bentdalen.

The next thing to remember is that they did not have last names (with a few exceptions, like some city dwellers) until they came to America, or if they stayed in Norway, the early 1900's.  Those extra names were associated with them, but were not the names they were called by.  The extra names identified whose father they had, and usually where they lived.  (You probably knew that already.)  But we now assign last names to them from those extras.

There isn't a good standard yet for Norwegian names, so they are often handled in inconsistent ways.  There have been some good attempts to standardize early Scandinavian naming, mostly very well expressed by those with a Dutch point of view or Swedish point of view, but those countries had mostly settled on fixed names by early genealogical times, and Norway did not until much later.  So farm names are much more important in Norwegian naming.  LNAB is a real problem here, and they did not have married names.

(Someone with more Norwegian experience than myself may correct any errors I've made.)

by Rob Jacobson G2G6 Pilot (136k points)
edited by Rob Jacobson
Now you know why I passed the buck on that one :-)
You gave me a good laugh!

I wish I had more time, but I don't just now.  Without going very far, I see at least 3 clear merges.  But it would take more research to decide what the correct names should be at birth, and what they became in America.  Most of the names look wrong to me, except for Marie's parents.
+3 votes

Her baptism is here, No. 7:

SAH, Dovre prestekontor, Parish register (official) no. 1, 1854-1878, p. 7
Link: https://www.digitalarkivet.no/kb20070129660095

Her name is written as "Mari Johannesdatter Qveum" where Qveum, or Kveum in modern spelling, is the place where she was born.

Her parents are recorded as Johannes Sivertsen and Ragnhild Larsdatter. Her LNAB should clearly be Johannesdatter. I'd put the "Kveum, Justløkken, Bentdalen" address list in the OLN field.

See also "Norway Project Naming Conventions".

I may clean this up myself, but I've got lots of other things to do.

by Leif Biberg Kristensen G2G6 Pilot (205k points)
I've renamed Mari, her father, and her mother according to standard Norwegian naming conventions. I've added references and transcripts of Mari's baptism and the marriage of her parents.

Somebody who knows a little about American sources should probably clean up the text on Mari. I have no idea what should be saved here, if anything.

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