Your Favourite Census Mistranscriptions!

[Paul E]

'You say 'McCooey', I say 'McCoohy' - lets call the whole thing off!'

[NigelG]

I wouldn't say it's my favourite mistranscription - probably the most frustrating...so far! My Great & GG Grandmothers Clara Harper & Beatrice Clara Harper - found them transcribed under the surname of Foster!

Thankfully, Clara's sister Daisy and a very distinctive place of birth saved the day 

[Manchester Rambler]

Trying to trace my Daintith connections - admittedly not the most common name in Britain, but fairly straightforward, I thought - it took me hours!  They were listed under:

Dainleth - Dainbeth - Dainlith - Dainteth - Dainbith - Dainceth - Damteth - Damtith - Damtiith - Damtish - Daintish

And those are just the ones I found!

Poor Vanda Daintith is Vandick Damtith in 1871, but I think that one is more the enumerator's fault than the transcriber's.

MR

[Jacsel]

When I first started researching my Illingworth gr x 2 grandfather, I found one of his sons listed as Horne Pybus Illingworth,  I thought his first name was influenced by the fact he was born into a very musical family!  But it was a transcription error, his name was actually Horace!

[Gilld]

After a great deal of searching I found one of my EMMINGS transcribed as COMMINGS....the old fashioned E becoming Co   !!!!!!!

Gill

[PaulineJ]

Trying to trace my Daintith connections - admittedly not the most common name in Britain, but fairly straightforward, I thought - it took me hours! They were listed under:

Dainleth - Dainbeth - Dainlith - Dainteth - Dainbith - Dainceth - Damteth - Damtith - Damtiith - Damtish - Daintish

And those are just the ones I found!

Just be grateful that they start and end with the right letter sequence.

This weekend, I found Edward Thompson and family listed as "Shomper".

Pauline

[Chris1969]

I just found Fairy King in 1901

should be Daisy

Chris

[miss marple]

One of my ancestors is called BOWTELL. His name is indexed as follows:

1861: BOUTELL
1871: BONSELL
1881: BOWTALL
1891: BOWTALE
1901: BOWSELL on National Archives website, BOWLIN on ancestry.co.uk.

So that's a full house – name spelled wrong in every census! Anyone beat that?

Jane

[debycoles]

I too have ancesters in Somerset and a good many of them come up as born in Somalia.  It never occurred to those imputting the info for Somerset that SOM could be short for Somerset - it was much more likely to be short for Somalia of course!.

Today I found some apparently born in Sierra Leone - which if course they weren't. 

And one whole family of WRIDE were entered as KIDO - I checked the image and it was clear and obvious!

What goes on.  Lots of others which makes it difficult to find people but using ancestry I normally resort to using the families most uncommon christian name, the date of birth and the area to eventually track people down.