Spelling of Names
Lauren B. Davis DDL OMNI
In reply to:
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Date: Tue, 21 Jan 1997 07:47:36 PST
From: Leonard Kamenetsky <Leonid_K...@notes.pw.com>
Subject: Is spelling that irrelevant?
The JewishGen FAQ is a great source of information. Reading it, we can learn a
lot of things, and spare many questions posted to this forum. At the same time,
some statements in FAQ are controversial. For example:
"SPELLING is irrelevant. Spelling is a 20th-century invention and obsession.
Names were never spelled in a standard way in earlier records."
Sounds a bit extreme, doesn't it? Never say never! If "spelling is a
20th-century invention
and obsession", does it mean that in the 19th century, school boys in Frankfurt
were taught
different spelling, than children in Hamburg? Was Gogol's spelling totally
different from
Dostoyevsky's?
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Let's understand something about the topic at hand: the FAQ, I believe,
is specifically referring to names, as this statement, to the best
of my recollection, appears under the names section.
However, digressing for a moment, it should also be pointed out that,
at least in Russian Poland, names were not the only thing that suffered
from inconsistent spelling. Occupations are often hard to discern
because of the multitude of spellings for a single word (not to be
confused with synonyms).
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"Spelling is not always consistent and reliable in a genealogical research. We
all know
examples, when two brothers spell their surname differently, or even the same
person
spelled his name differently in different periods of his life. There are many
reasons for that:
scribes' errors, transliterations, intentional changes, etc. Therefore, one
should be cautious
to come to conclusions, based solely on the spelling of a name."
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Certainly this is true. Additionally, examples abound where the name
of an individual is spelled in two or three different ways in a single
vital record.
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However, spelling can also be a valuable source of information. For instance,
GREENSPAN,
GRUENSPANN, GRYNSZPAN, GRINSHPUN, and GRINSHPON are variations of the same
name. But the spelling of each version contains a hint to the geographicl
and/or linguistic
area, where the name was recorded! Caution: it's only a clue, not a firm
conclusion.
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You must be careful not to overanalyze and look for explanations for
everything. In a single town, the same family may be spelled EISENBERG
and AJZENBERG. They LOOK like two different geographic origins, but this
is not necessarily the case, especially when the two spellings refer
to the same person, the same year, even the same record.
The bottom line here is that anything that remotely resembles a name
you are seeking must be considered a viable candidate.
Lauren
Lauren B. Eisenberg Davis
mer...@access.digex.net
Baltimore, MD
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