Surname spellings (was Sending amendments to GRO)

[webwiz]

I have sent 20 amendments to GRO. 13 have been acted on, 2 are waiting, but on 5 no action was taken as "not necessary". All of them are clear cut errors and if they had an upload system I could send them the actual page. Has anyone else similar experience?

 

[At home in NZ]

Has anyone else similar experience?

My last request for an amendment was 30 Jul 2020, it is 'Awaiting investigation'.
It looks like I have made about 28 requests since 11 Feb 2017, most have been corrected but some of them have
'Indexed data is correct' in the GRO Comments line.

 

[webwiz]

Strange. Are they looking at the same document as we are? It's as if the index which is photographed and published on line on ancestry sites are incorrect and GRO's site is based on records from an earlier source. This would make sense, as some details they show are not on the indexes which we can see, eg mother's maiden name at birth and date of birth at death, for early dates.

 

[peter]

Strange. Are they looking at the same document as we are? It's as if the index which is photographed and published on line on ancestry sites are incorrect and GRO's site is based on records from an earlier source. This would make sense, as some details they show are not on the indexes which we can see, eg mother's maiden name at birth and date of birth at death, for early dates.

No, they're not looking at the same documents as you are - see the newsletter for articles explaining the differences between the new indexes and the contemporary indexes.

 

[At home in NZ]

they're not looking at the same documents as you are

So what do we do when we know the GRO is wrong?
I raised an error in the birth index because the mother’s maiden name is incorrect in the GRO Index.

Person’s name is Lillian Hesketh, registered Jan-Feb-Mar 1876 Derby, 7b 494

In the GRO Index the mother’s maiden name is Wallis. GRO is telling me the indexed data is correct.

I KNOW her mother’s name was Margaret Wallace because I have Margaret’s birth cert and a copy of the parish marriage register.
Lillian had a sister Florence, her mother's maiden name in the GRO Index is correctly given as Wallace.

 

[Helen7]

Person’s name is Lillian Hesketh, registered Jan-Feb-Mar 1876 Derby, 7b 494
In the GRO Index the mother’s maiden name is Wallis. GRO is telling me the indexed data is correct.
I KNOW her mother’s name was Margaret Wallace because I have Margaret’s birth cert and a copy of the parish marriage register.

Do you have Lillian's birth certificate to check the spelling of her mother's maiden name on that? Perhaps it's misspelt as Wallis, in which case the GRO are right that the indexed data matches the original record.

I have come across numerous examples of names being misspelt in the GRO index, and I have assumed (maybe wrongly) that it was misspelt on the original - or that the hand-written original was unclear resulting in an inaccurate transcription.

 

[At home in NZ]

Do you have Lillian's birth certificate to check the spelling of her mother's maiden name on that?

I don't have her birth cert but now realise that if I ordered one from the GRO it would be Wallis because that's what they say it is.
When I raised this I didn't think it through very well did I?
Thanks Helen.

 

[peter]

So what do we do when we know the GRO is wrong?

There are two situations: one is where the information in the index has been incorrectly transcribed from the GRO's register, the other is where the information in their register is incorrect.

In the former case the GRO should update their index when the error is pointed out, provided the handwriting is sufficiently clear. If your correction is supported by the relevant quarterly index then mention this (remember they are the GRO's indexes, not Ancestry's, FreeBMD's etc), but bear in mind that there can also be errors in the quarterly indexes, especially the printed ones.

In the latter case the error could have arisen at the time of registration, in which case it will also be reflected in the contemporary quarterly index and the local index (if there is one). In this situation there's no point asking for an historic entry to be changed because the answer will be no, unless the error is blatantly obvious, as in the marriage certificate in my latest newsletter.

If the event was correctly recorded in the local register, but incorrectly copied onto the loose pages that were bound into the GRO register then the GRO may alter their register if appropriate evidence is submitted, eg a copy of the local register entry.

 

[Pauline]

My last request for an amendment was 30 Jul 2020, it is 'Awaiting investigation'.

An amendment I submitted in mid July has been investigated (and corrected) this week, so I expect yours will be looked at soon. I submitted quite a few in August that are still awaiting investigation - one missing entry, several mis-readings of one particular surname, and one missing maiden name.

So far all the amendments I've submitted have resulted in corrections to the index after investigation.

 

[At home in NZ]

There are two situations: one is where the information in the index has been incorrectly transcribed from the GRO's register, the other is where the information in their register is incorrect.

In the former case the GRO should update their index when the error is pointed out, provided the handwriting is sufficiently clear. If your correction is supported by the relevant quarterly index then mention this (remember they are the GRO's indexes, not Ancestry's, FreeBMD's etc), but bear in mind that there can also be errors in the quarterly indexes, especially the printed ones.

The quarterly index in Ancestry is a printed one and does not include mother's maiden name. I asked the GRO to correct their online index because through my research I knew what the mother's maiden name should be.
I am not in the habit of obtaining local registers therefore I don't have a copy of the local register entry.
This may simply be a case of 'what the writer heard is what they wrote', although the mother could write because she signed her name in the marriage register.

 

[peter]

The quarterly index in Ancestry is a printed one and does not include mother's maiden name. I asked the GRO to correct their online index because through my research I knew what the mother's maiden name should be.
I am not in the habit of obtaining local registers therefore I don't have a copy of the local register entry.
This may simply be a case of 'what the writer heard is what they wrote', although the mother could write because she signed her name in the marriage register.

It could be the marriage register that's wrong. A quick check shows that there were 3 children registered in Derby RD between 1866 and 1876 with surname Hesketh and mother's maiden name Wallis. There are none with the maiden name Wallace.

It seems overwhelmingly unlikely that the GRO would have made the same mistake on each occasion. Perhaps, as with some of the surnames in my tree, the spelling was still varying in the second half of the 19th century? We tend to think there is only one right answer but that wasn't the case.

 

[Helen7]

Perhaps, as with some of the surnames in my tree, the spelling was still varying in the second half of the 19th century? We tend to think there is only one right answer but that wasn't the case.

Oh I totally agree. In my family, I have lots of examples of variable spellings of surnames in the 19th century, including a birth certificate where the father's surname is spelled two different ways in the 'father' and 'informant' columns.

 

[webwiz]

I have a family in the early part of the 19C, both parents illiterate, who presented the same vicar with 9 children over a dozen or so years and he managed to spell them all differently. You would think that he might sometimes have checked back to the previous one to see how he spelt that one, but spelling was not important to them.

 

[At home in NZ]

There are none with the maiden name Wallace.

The mother was definitely Margaret Wallace, I have her birth cert and in turn her father's baptism record who was Richard Wallace.
The marriage register is correct.

Margaret married Job Hesketh, they had 3 children while living in Derby and as you say Peter, the mother's maiden name is Wallis.
The family moved south and more children arrived: Florence registered in Notting Hill, then Job registered in Greenwich, then Margaret registered in Greenwich all with mother's maiden name Wallace in the GRO Online Index.
Wallis is incorrect, perhaps it's something to do with dialect.

I am not disputing changing of names through the ages, I have enough instances in my own trees.
There are three ways to spell my own first name, I am lucky that the correct version is recorded in all my official records.

 

[peter]

The mother was definitely Margaret Wallace, I have her birth cert and in turn her father's baptism record who was Richard Wallace.
The marriage register is correct.

It's often not possible to say that this or that spelling is correct - the evidence we have suggests that both spellings were used, and so one might argue that each was correct at the time.

The notion of a fixed spelling for surnames is a very modern one - Shakespeare spelled his name in different ways, and it wasn't until a century ago that the spelling we now use became the standard.

When my 3G grandfather married for the first time in 1817 he signed his name Beaumont; when he married my 3G grandmother in 1827 he signed his name Beament. When my grandmother was born in 1894 her surname was correctly recorded as Beamont, which was the accepted spelling in her branch of the family at that time. When she married in 1915 it was recorded as Beaumont, which was also correct at that time.

Some other branches of the family still use the Beamont spelling, others use the spelling Beament. ALL of the spellings are correct.

 

[Sue_3]

I have a friend with a Polish surname that is pronounced differently by different people they know, including different members of their own family! The spelling is fixed because most people believe in sticking to a 'correct' spelling at this time, and in this country. However I am sure that in England 200 years ago their surname would have been spelled in various different ways, to reflect the different pronunciations?

 

[Bryman]

To add extra confusion, I have even seen records where members of the same family spell their surname as differently as "Smale" and "Archer", and then for it to be changed in the next generation or for the next census, so I think that we just have to accept that whatever is recorded was believed to be correct at that time. Such variations are all part of the challenge of Family History.

 

[peter]

A further complication is that the spelling of the family name can vary from one baptism to another. What spelling do you record in your tree (assuming your tree program allows you to have different surnames for different offspring)? There probably isn't a right answer, or even a best answer.

 

[webwiz]

For my most problematic surname, and I would guess for all names, it settled down to a fixed spelling once literacy became widespread. So I use the modern version as the main surname and make a note of each variant spelling in the appropriate place. Otherwise it just becomes too messy and whilst my program (FT Maker) will allow children to have different surnames it will not allow a person's name to change in their lifetime although you can have a AKA.

 

[peter]

For my most problematic surname, and I would guess for all names, it settled down to a fixed spelling once literacy became widespread. So I use the modern version as the main surname and make a note of each variant spelling

Whilst a particular spelling might perpetuate within a particular branch I don't like the idea of taking a modern spelling and backfitting it to ancestors. There's also the problem that people from different branches would end up using different surnames for the same ancestors.

Incidentally it would be wrong to assume that the variation in the spelling of surnames has any direct connection with levels of literacy - people who could read and write also varied the spelling of their surname (including Shakespeare).