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General => The Common Room => Topic started by: Erato on Sunday 24 December 17 17:30 GMT (UK)
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What do people generally do about recording surname changes in a family tree - stick to the original birth surname or record the person under the new surname?
I have an individual who changed his surname from Rosewarne to Rosewaine. This happened in about 1925 to 30ish when he was about 25 years old. I don't know if the change was made in court but he lived out the rest of his life and was buried under the new name. His daughter was born with the amended name. As far as I can tell, no other member of his family made such a change; the rest all stuck with Rosewarne.
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What do people generally do about recording surname changes in a family tree - stick to the original birth surname or record the person under the new surname?
I have an individual who changed his surname from Rosewarne to Rosewaine. This happened in about 1925 to 30ish when he was about 25 years old. I don't know if the change was made in court but he lived out the rest of his life and was buried under the new name. His daughter was born with the amended name. As far as I can tell, no other member of his family made such a change; the rest all stuck with Rosewarne.
Both!
On the software I use I record the person under his/her birth name or baptism name if no birth name is recorded, I then add any or all alternative names on the record under the names tag.
This allows me to record as many alternative names as I wish under the identifiers of
Also Known As,
Nickname,
Short name (for reports),
Adopted name,
Hebrew Name,
Census Name,
Married Name,
German Name,
Farm Name,
Birth Name,
Indian name,
Formal Name,
Current Name,
Soldier Name,
Formerly Known As,
Religious Name,
Called,
Indigenous Name,
Tombstone Name,
Other Name.
I can also add a Prefix or Suffix to the names here.
Cheers
Guy
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I record people using the name they use the most often, and attach notes to any records which use a different spelling.
For example, one relative was born with the surname Moul, and appears in one census with this spelling, but when he married he spelled it Moule, his children were registered with this spelling, and so was his death (and his wife's). So he's recorded in my tree as Moule with a note attached to his birth record stating the alternative spelling.
Sometimes it's not so straightforward deciding which of several spellings to use!
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Name changes can be for a number of reason's in one of my families there are 7 different spellings and with 3 different spellings on one marriage record and I have proved that they are all in my tree...another reason could be just missplet when recorded.
Yonks
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I have found this a little confusing at times... one branch of my maternal sides surname is 'Harris' but somewhere over time they decided to add an extra 's'!!
As you can inmagine with a fairly common name like this it has made research quite difficult and I've spent some considerable time proving which Harris/s's have been mine.
I have recorded them with which ever version has been on their birth/bap details. Some have chopped and changed between the two versions, although it's possible that whoever was recording the information didn't always get the correct version.
My gt.grandmother apparently always made a point of telling people it was spelt with two 's's.
Caroline
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I have 3 different spellings on one marriage record. The bride was Elizabeth CORY and the witnesses were Richard COREY and Richard CORRIE
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I am undertaking a review of all my instances of name changing to see if I can find some consistent policy. Of course, I take note of name variations in the notes attached to individuals but oftentimes one doesn't know if the variants are errors made by census enumerators or some other official or whether they represent the spelling used by the person him/herself. The Wares in my tree are especially problematical in this respect. It was only in about 1850ish that they all seemed to settle on 'Ware;' previously they had been variously known as Ware, Waire, Wair, Weare, Wire, Wyer, etc. But, for the most part, I don't know what spelling each of them favored or whether they were consistent throughout their own lives.
The Rosewarne/Rosewaine case is different, though, because he made a conscious decision to change his name and I know when he did it. I think I even know why he did it. He had joined the Marines as a youth and it was later discovered that he was underage and he was discharged for that reason. Since he was apparently set on a military career, he reenlisted when he was older and, at that point, he changed his name, presumably to disassociate himself from his previous aborted time in the Marine Corps.
I have another person who abruptly changed his first and middle names when he was in his thirties. The new names were entirely different from the old but at least he kept his surname intact. There was also one who was registered as Sarah Elizabeth but was always called Florence G.
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It was only in about 1850ish that they all seemed to settle on 'Ware;' previously they had been variously known as Ware, Waire, Wair, Weare, Wire, Wyer, etc. But, for the most part, I don't know what spelling each of them favored or whether they were consistent throughout their own lives.
I would say that the mid-1800s was/were the time when literacy was improving so that enough people were becoming able to read and write their names in a standard way. Most of those who could not would likely only see their surnames written at birth/baptism or marriage, or at a relative's death - so the spelling fell to the recorder, who may have settled on spellings for local families, but made something up for others. Educated families had probably chosen a spelling by then, and insisted on it. I guess as children learnt to write at school, their teacher may have shown them how to spell their surname - another source of variations?
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Your Rosewarne/Rosewaine theory may well be correct Erato, but if your lad made a conscious decision to change his name to enlist in the marines on his second attempt, why make such a subtle change? If he wanted a new identity he could have changed it to a completely different surname, or called himself Rose or Warne for example if he wanted to keep some of his old identity?
I think that sometimes the written (scribbled) small letter "r" can look like an "i". I wonder if someone in authority (possibly upon enlistment as you have narrowed it down to this time frame) wrote his surname as such - the next person who looked at his file saw an "i" instead of an "r" - your ancestor either was unaware or did not want to bring attention to himself so just went with what was written. The surname "stuck" and was never corrected? Have you sighted his enlistment papers?
I have a name change in my family, though oddly enough the proposed etymology is the same for both. In my case I think the change coincided with my ancestor moving to another part of the country - different accents = different interpretations of how that surname sounded in the new county.
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I don't think illiteracy was an issue in the case of the Wares, even in the 1700s. Basic education was seemingly more readily available in the United States than in Britain, at least in New England. In theory, starting in the mid 1600s towns were required to set up schools and schooling was compulsory for boys; girls were mostly taught at home. By the mid 1700s almost all villages had a rudimentary school. In 1845, Litchfield, Maine [home of the Wares] had two competing private high schools; the Ware children attended one of them and three of the five children, one son and two daughters, went on to college. Even so, there was some divergence of opinion about how to spell the name.
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As for Rosewarne/Rosewaine, there are dozens of military documents with the new name; he appears on two censuses as Rosewaine; he was married twice as Rosewaine; his daughter was called Rosewaine; and he was buried with that name on the stone. It is possible he made the change for some non-military reason - there is a lapse between the last known use of Rosewarne [1923] and his re-enlistment as Rosewaine in 1927 and I don't know what he was calling himself during those years.
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Have you seen a copy of the original 1927 enlistment document? Does the surname look like Rosewaine, Rosewarne or is it not clear? (that is, could the 'r' be mistaken for an 'i'?)
If the name variation occurred prior to his enlistment between 1923 and 1927, it could still be for a similar reason, accidental rather than intentional. :-\
:)
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I haven't seen the enlistment document. The military records are all monthly 'muster rolls' that start the month after his enlistment and chronicle his military career [there are dozens of them, month after tedious month, all in the name of Rosewaine]. I just don't buy the theory that he felt obliged to change his name because some Marine Corps clerk made a typing error and he was too timid to speak up about it, so he went through the rest of his life with an erroneous name - including his commission as a 2nd lieutenant [reported in the Congressional Record], two marriages [his signature is on the second one], the death of his first wife [which he reported as Rosewaine], the birth of a daughter named Rosewaine, two censuses, and ultimately his burial under a rock labeled Rosewaine which must have been approved by his wife.
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Fair enough. Changing only one letter seems odd though. Perhaps he simply preferred the sound of ..waine rather than ...warne.
I've just remembered a similar story - someone with the surname Bird hated it because people called her tweety bird, so she changed it to Baird. She appears variously as Bird and Baird on official documents. There may have been similar reasons, lost in the annals of time, for your ancestor's slight name change?
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There seems to be some confusion on the forum about the use of names as some people seem to think names were used in the past as they are used today.
That is incorrect, in the past names, both the name itself and the spelling of it were far more fluid than they are today.
A brief explanation may be found on one of the familysearch wikis.
Historical Use of Aliases in the United Kingdom
http://www.rootschat.com/links/01l77/
Cheers
Guy
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I haven't seen the enlistment document. The military records are all monthly 'muster rolls' that start the month after his enlistment and chronicle his military career [there are dozens of them, month after tedious month, all in the name of Rosewaine]. .....
Maybe after all that education he thought he would 'correct' the spelling to what he felt was the historically right version?
The family name of an ancestor of mine from Somerset alternated between Allard and Allwood, which raises the interesting question of how it actually sounded. No wonder spellings varied a bit ....
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A variation in spelling is one thing -- how about someone who uses two completely different names interchangeably throughout his life?
My husband's Great great grandfather used the christian names Richard & Joseph and the surnames Plant & Hor(r)obin randomly throughout his life. He was very tricky to sort out!
Some of his children used the surname Plant in later life, others used Horrobin
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"both the name itself and the spelling of it were far more fluid than they are today"
Sure, that's why I consider the Ware case to be entirely different from the Rosewarne case, as I said.
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One of my lot - usually SHERRARD - appears in 1881 as SHERMAN, then in 1891 and 1901 as SHEARMAN, dying in 1907 as SHERRARD. His "wife" (apparently separated) stays as SHERRARD (ish) throughout.