The "Real" Name

Have you ever had a relative correct you saying that your ancestor's "real name" was something other than what you have on the family tree or in your genealogical database?  Maybe this real name is the name that appears on a baptism record or the one that they preferred to be called.  Unfortunately, a name is not the same as a date.  An ancestor's birth date is an immutable fact.  Whether or not records are consistent or accurate, there is an objective birth date that can never change.  Names are much more changeable and contextually-defined facts.  I have a name that I use in official contexts and others I use in informal contexts.  You may have a nickname that family uses, one that friends use and one you use at work.  And these may change over time.

The proliferation of names is made even more maddening when other languages are added to the mix.  How can you decide what is the "real" name? Let's look at one example.

Case of Johann Georg Schöndorf
I have discussed my Schoendorf line before (here and here).  Records for this line are in French, German and Latin.  Records for Johann Georg Schöndorf who lived in the 1700s are in both Latin and French.  In his marriage record, a French record, he is "Jean George Schöndorf".

In his son's marriage record, a Latin record, he is listed as "Johannis Georgii Schöndorff".

There are two issues here.  First, the name is in Latin and, second, the name has a special form because it is possessive. This form is in the genitive case.  If we want to cite the Latin name, we should convert it to the nominative case, which is what is used as the default.  In this case the name would be "Johannes Georgius Schöndorf".  For more on Latin, check out this post.

But,  I know he spoke German, so what do we do? Do we convert the name to German or not?  It seems unlikely that he would use the Latin and French forms outside of records.  Fortunately, we have examples of the German name in his signature on the same two documents.

In this case it is probably safe to use the German form, but what if the only records you have are in Latin and not the local language?  Ultimately, you get to decide what name to use. The most important things to do are be consistent, so others will understand what you are doing, and recognize the reality that for some questions there is not always a clear or final answer. When you are transcribing a record, you should keep the name as close to what is found in the record and, to clarify, you can add a standardized name in brackets, such as "Jean George Schöndorf [Johann Georg Schöndorf]".

A tip for identifying the language of a document

When approaching a new document, the first thing you need to do is identify the language it is written in. Then, you'll be able to find an appropriate dictionary and other tools that will let you make sense of it. There are a number of ways to do this, but you often need look no further than the first three or four words.  Many records like birth, baptism and marriage records follow very common formats.  One feature of these documents is that they often begin with the date the event occurred or was recorded.  So, simply by knowing a few common expressions you can quickly and easily identify the language of a document.

My Schoendorf line lived for several generations in Peppenkum . Although now a part of Germany, this area was ruled at various times by both France and Bavaria.  Records for this predominantly Catholic area are written in at least three different languages, Latin, French and German, depending on the period and context of the document. For example, I have three different documents (all available at the Family History Library).  The first is from a marriage record in a church register from 1782 for Johann Georg Schoendorf and Catherine Conrad.
  

Source: Film 351837

The first words are "L'an mil".  L'an is a contraction of the French words Le, which is the definite article "the", and an, the word for "year". Mil is the word for "thousand".

Next is the marriage record for their son Johann Schoendorf and his wife Anna Maria Klinlger from 1817.

Source: Film 351839

The language has changed; in place of French we find the Latin phrase "Anno Domini milesimo".  Anno means "in the year".  If you just wanted to say "the year", you would use annus, but Latin has special endings that tell you what function the word plays (see this post).  In this case, the ending -o tells us that it means "in the year".  Domini means "of the Lord". Here the ending -i tell us that Dominus has a possessive function.  Finally, we have the word milesimo (usually millesimo).  For now, let's just say it means "thousand".  I have a post planned for dealing with Latin numbers, which are a bit complicated.

You may have noticed the similarities between the French and Latin words for year an and anno and those for thousand mil  and millesimo.  This is because French, like all Romance languages, descends from Latin.

The final record, from 1866, is the civil registration of the birth of Caspar Schoendorf, the grandson and great grandson of the above couples.

Source : Film 1057430

Once again we encounter a new language.  This time it's German.  The first four words are "Im Jahr ein tausend", which translates as "In the year one thousand".  This is almost a word-for-word translation of the English.  The only tricky part is the word "im" which combines the preposition in "in" with the definite article dem "the".

Because English is a Germanic language, you will notice the similarities between German and English.  The word Jahr, where the initial J is pronounced like English Y, is similar to the English word year, and tausend is very close to thousand.

The first few words in all three documents contain the same two words, "year" and "thousand".  Think of these as keywords; since you are very likely to encounter them in a document, they can help you identify the language.  It may not help for every record, but it is at least one way of narrowing down the possibilities.

Surname Saturday - Kowatch

This month I am focusing on surnames that are in some way related to that most common of English surnames, Smith.  Like people, languages can be grouped into families that are related by descent from a common ancestor.  Languages in the same family will resemble each other in many ways.  Last Saturday, I talked about the surname Smith, which comes from the word for someone who works with metal. English belongs to the Germanic language family which includes German, Dutch and Scandinavian languages.  So, you find surnames like Schmidt in German or Smit in Dutch with the same meaning and origin.

In Europe there are three very large and important language families: Germanic in the North, Romance in the South, and Slavic in the East. In Slavic surnames derived from the word meaning Smith are also very common.  These include Kowalski and Kowalczyk in Polish, Kovář in Czech, Kováč in Slovak, Koval and Kovalenko in Ukranian, Kovalev in Russian, and Kovač in Serbian. 


Mathias Kowatch in the US Census

My second great aunt, Gertrude Schoendorf, married Matthew Kowatch.  This surname is most likely related to the Slavic surnames described above.  But, before we examine how it is related, let's take a look at my aunt's father-in-law, Mathias Kowatch  In a post earlier this week (here), I explained how we can use census to explore our linguistic heritage. Mathias Kowatch can be found in four censues (1900, 1910, 1920 and 1930).  Several different responses are provided for his place of birth. These include both the place listed on his enumeration and that of his son.

1900 - Hungary
1910 - Germany
1920 - Slk/Hun.
1930 - Czechoslovakia/Hungary

But in the three years where the mother tongue is provided, German is given.  What's going on here?

First, the 1910 census appears to involve a mistake.  I would guess that the enumerator assumed Mathias was from Germany because he speaks German.  This would fall into the category of an error.  For the other cases we have to understand something about the history of the region. Before 1918, much of eastern Europe was under the control of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This empire was divided into two main parts: Austria and the Kingdom of Hungary. The Kingdom of Hungary covered modern Hungary along with modern Slovakia and parts of Romania and the former Yugoslavia.  The kingdom also contained large numbers of German minorities scattered throughout (See map of ethnic makeup of the empire here).  The pattern in the censuses suggest that Mathias was from what is now Slovakia and that he was a member of the German speaking minority.

Another clue comes from another error by the enumerator, but this time the error is in our favor.  Although the enumerator is only supposed to give the country of birth, sometimes a more specific location is given.  The 1920 census provides the following information:

This somewhat difficult to decipher place name may correspond to the town of Medzev, Slovakia, which is known in German as Metzenseifen.

The development of the surname Kowatch
Now that we have a better understanding of Mathias Kowatch, we can return to his surname.  One of the most common names in Slovakia is Kováč, meaning "smith".  In Hungarian, one of the most common names Kovács, which is spelled differently—both Slovak č and Hungarian cs are pronounced like English ch—but sounds pretty much the same way.  The Hungarian name is a borrowing from Slavic.  The name Kowatch, which was probably originally Kowatsch, is the German spelling of this Slavic name; German w corresponds to v  and tsch corresponds to the ch-sound.  Tsch may have been changed to tch under the influence of English words like "watch".

It is possible that this Kowatch family was originally Slovak or Hungarian, but were later Germanized, but there is no way to tell from the available evidence.  Perhaps a DNA test would offer some evidence. This is a good example of how names are not always the best guide to the ethnicity of your ancestors.  Although the origin of a name may point to your ancestors' origins, this may be very remote with your ancestors having assimilated to another culture long ago or they may have adopted a name which is unrelated to their own family's origins.

The Genealogy of Writing Systems

What do the surnames Staszak, Schöndorf, Chêneau and Jaroš have in common? Beside being in my family tree, they all share a common sound. Polish "sz", German "sch", French "ch" and Czech "š" are the same sound, the sound represented in English by the combination "sh" or in the International Phonetic Alphabet by the symbol "ʃ". Why are there so many ways of representing this sound in different languages?

To answer this question, we must understand that writing systems, like people, have genealogies. In this case, all these writing system have a common ancestor, Latin. The reason there are so many different ways of representing the "sh" sound is that this sound is not found in Latin. As the Latin alphabet came to be adopted for other languages, people came up with ways of representing sounds not found in Latin.

There are four ways to do this. The examples below show some of the many ways that the "sh" sound is represented.

1. Combine letters to represent new sounds (Polish "sz" German "sch" and English "sh")
2. Modify existing letters by adding extra symbols called diacritics (Czech "š" and Turkish "ş")
3. Use a letter in a new way (Maltese "x")
4. Create a new symbol or borrow one from a different writing system (I can't think of any examples for this sound, but there are cases for other sounds like Old Norse þ for the "th" sound in "thorn")

In many cases, especially with languages without a long written history, the new writing system was often created by an individual or a committee. However, in languages with long written histories, things are much more complicated. For example, French is an ancestor of Latin in two ways. It owes not only its alphabet to Latin, but the language itself. The "ch" which represents the "sh" sound developed from an earlier "k" sound, or hard "c". The development in this cases was more gradual and less deliberate.

Although we often assume a deep connection between a language and how it is written, this is perhaps the aspect of a language that is most easily changed. Turkey did away with the Arabic script in the first half of the twentieth century and adopted a modified Latin script. In some cases, a single language or two very closely related languages may adopt two different systems, like Serbian (Cyrillic script) and Croatian (Latin script) or Hindi (Devanagari script) and Urdu (Arabic script).

For genealogists, an awareness of these differences between scripts can come in handy. A single surname may be spelled in many ways depending on the context. For a German name starting with "sch" like Schulz, don't be surprised if it is rendered by an English speaker as Shulz. Things are especially complicated for a language like Czech. A name like Jaroš may be spelled Jarosch, as it frequently was when Bohemia was a part of the German-language-dominated Austrian Empire. In Poland, this name might become Jarosz and, in the English-speaking world, Jarosh. Knowing something about the history of your family and where they're from and the languages of the region can help you better search for your ancestors.

Where exactly are they from?

Obituaries can provide very valuable clues for discovering the origins of immigrant ancestors. However, you need to be careful with information that may have become lost in translation as it passed from the original immigrants to their children or newspaper editors who may not have known your ancestors' language as well or at all.

For example, the first paragraph of Henry Kappmeier's obituary¹ provides information about where he and his wife were born.

Mr. H. Kappmeier was born at Furstenthum Waldech at Pyrmont, Germany, Dec. 14, 1830. He came to America in 1854 and married Maria Bergmann of Koenigriech, Hannover, April 11, 1858. Their marriage took place in the now Chicago Avenue Evangeical Lutheran church, Rev. Hartman officiating at the ceremony.

If you are not familiar with German, you may assume that Henry was born in a village called Furstenthum Waldech and his wife in a town called Koenigriech. A simple mistake was made either by Henry's descendants or the newspaper. Furstenthum and Koenigriech are not the names of places, but are the words Fürstentum, meaning "Principality", and Königreich, meaning "Kingdom". Henry was from the Principality of Waldeck and Maria was from the Kingdom of Hanover.

When dealing with a foreign language, the first and most important rule is not to make any assumptions. If you are having trouble locating a place with Google Maps, it might be worthwhile checking a good dictionary like BEOLINGUS, an online German dictionary. Some of the words that you think are just part of a place name may have a meaning that will help you better interpret your records.



1. A copy of the original obituary from the Beecher Herald (Beecher, IL) can be found at Karens-Gen.Com.

Surname Saturday - Schoendorf

Paul Schoendorf, my great-great-grandfather, settled in Cleveland, Ohio at the end of the 19th century. He came from a village outside Gersheim, which is now in the German state of Saarland, near the border with France. The name Schoendorf has a number of features that are very typical of German names. Words and names are often long and complex in German. However, by breaking words into their parts it can be easy to discover the meaning of a name. In turn, this my give clues to the origins of your family.

The name Schoendorf can be easily broken into two parts. The first part of the name comes from the adjective schön, meaning "beautiful". The second part of the name is the German word Dorf, which means "village". It is a common element in many German place names, perhaps most famously in the city of Düsseldorf. And, because it is common in place names, it has also become common in surnames, as in the name of the founder of Bergdorf Goodman department store in New York. Together, the meaning of Schoendorf is the somewhat generic "beautiful village".

The Umlaut
You may have noticed that the word for beautiful in German has the letter O with two dots written above it (ö). This character is usually referred to as an "O with umlaut". The name Schoendorf would also be written with this symbol in a German-speaking country. So, when looking in German databases, it may be necessary to type the name as "Schöndorf". When the umlaut character is unavailable, instead of simply dropping the two dots, the letter is written with a following E. This is also a very common convention that has been followed by many German immigrants when adapting names. For example, the very common German name of Müller is often found as Mueller. If you have a name, which you think is German, that has vowels "oe", "ue" and "ae", you may want to consider substituting these vowel pairs for the vowel with umlaut, "ö", "ü" and "ä". You may find something new this way. If you are going to type these characters a lot, you may want to look into the keyboards settings on your computer. If not, it is easy to produce these symbols in Microsoft Word. Simply type ctrl + shift + ; and then type the desired vowel. You can then copy and paste where needed.

Trees and More Trees

Historical linguistics is the branch of linguistics concerned with discovering the relationship between languages and understanding how languages change over time. Historical linguistics and genealogy have many things in common. Both are concerned with relationships and both require a systematic and thorough examination of the available evidence and careful argumentation. They also both share a fascination with maps and trees. Understanding something about historical linguistics can also help in genealogy.

Leveraging your knowledge
Understanding how languages are related can help you leverage the knowledge you have in one language for research in a related language. Like people, languages are grouped into families based on common descent. Some languages are very closely related, while others are more distantly related. More closely related languages typically have more words and structures in common. You can use your knowledge of English to help further research in other Germanic languages. Many of the words in German, Dutch and Scandinavian languages will be immediately familiar to speakers of English. You should be able to guess the meanings of verbs in German like beginnen, bringen, enden, fallen, helfen, kommen, kosten, landen, lernen, senden, springen, starten, wandern, and many others. If you know two languages are related, don't be afraid to guess the meaning of words that look familiar. You may make a wrong guess, but more often if you take the context into account you will be right.

Another important lesson from historical linguistics is that languages are often related in systematic ways. For example, the letter d in German often corresponds to th in English. You can use knowledge of this to help guess the meaning of words like danken "thank", denken "think", die "the", das "the or that", drei "three", dreizig "thirty", dein "thine", etc. Other examples of such systematic relations include German v and English f (vater and father) and German t and English d (tag vs. day). These difference are due to a combination of changes occurring in only one language and spelling conventions.

There is more to relationships than genetics
Another important lesson from historical linguistics is that languages are related in ways beyond common descent. Many of the similarities between languages are due to borrowing. Through the Roman Empire, the Catholic Church and science, Latin borrowings are found in every European language and most widely spoken languages of the world. Another language that had a huge influence on English is that of French. William the Conqueror and the Normans brought the French language with them fundamentally changing the English language. It is hardly possible to write a paragraph without some Latin or French borrowings. The science fiction writer Poul Anderson illustrates this by attempting to explain atomic theory in his essay titled "Uncleftish Beholding". It is useful to know which languages belonged to the same "community" and influenced the language you are working with.

In genealogy it is also important not to become to wrapped up exclusively on our ancestors blood relationships. They were also parts of communities and networks of friends which may yield evidence about our ancestors' lives.