Is it possible to de-capitlaise the name ffrench?

Question

Based on "how they used it".

Answer 1

Good question. It really should be possible.

Answer 2

Its rule seems to be that there must be a capital letter in a CLN somewhere.  It doesn't have to be the first letter.  But if it's all lowercase, then it will capitalize the first letter for you.

Comments

Just needs one line of code. If it starts with ff then lower case it, else whatever.(I think. Haven't written any for decades.)  Would be nice. There are ffitches too. Very odd.

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RJ is correct about the rule.

Are the "ff"s the only exceptions we have to worry about?

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Think so in England, all the de's have been accounted for. Was England the only country that tolerated such affectations?

Answer 3

Even odder. ODNB and Venn both use Ffrench. Looking for primary sources.

Comments

I posted Cokayne's view on this one

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Dillon-2040

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Got Rose married off.

Answer 4

We have plenty of profiles with LNABs that start with a lower-case letter. The Wikitree ID always shows the first letter of the name as an uppercase letter for these, even though the LNAB is in the system starting with a lowercase letter. I figure that's a technical requirement for the ID.

Are you saying it's impossible to create an LNAB that contains no uppercase letters? I can't imagine why that would be a technical necessity.

Comments

When I type it in lower case it always "corrects" it.

Answer 5

"ff" was the convention for capital F in Early American handwriting if used at the beginning of a word. This is documented in any number of texts on Early American handwriting. It doesn't represent two letters.

Comments

It's the same in England, unsurprisingly because the American handwriting  would derive from it.

It normally is totally correct to use one capital F (the duplicates caused by Ffreckes and Freckes and Ffootes  Footes both of of Ffifehead  or Fifehead Neville have been numerous !)  However,  in this case, the family adopted the 'affectation' of using a  double ff for their name  

See RJs note on the profile

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Thanks, Helen. Didn't follow that link. My bad.

The vast majority of the time, it is an error to transcribe as two lower case letters but happens all too frequently.