[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] name variation spellings

[Linda Marks Pauling]

  "I usually suggest  to genealogists that they collect their family names, 
rather than trying to  "correct" them.   I have seen records in which one 
single person's  name was spelled 6 different ways - in one
paragraph! "
I like your suggestion, Maureen.

A friend who came to the US from Bulgaria once told me the hardest thing for 
him was spelling because there was no such thing in his home. "You simply 
wrote what you heard," he explained. And that was after WWII.

As one who is attempting to extract information from the records in Sierpc 
and Lipno, I'd like to add the challenge of reading the handwriting, 
especiallly in some of the records, and also the sometimes poor copies.
You are correct, Nelson, that the people doing extractions are doing the 
best we can. :-)

Linda Pauling

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Nelson Itterman" <colnels at shaw.ca>
To: Sent: Monday, May 23, 2011 3:10 PM
Subject: Re: [Ger-Poland-Volhynia] name variation spellings


> Hi:
> I think the people doing the extraction were doing the best they could. 
> What
> you must remember is that many people in those years did not know
> how to read or write. They would say their name but did not how to spell 
> it.
> The person doing the recording guessed at the spelling and wrote what they
> heard.
> Nelson
>