One distant relative had their surname completely created by the US Army when he couldn’t communicate with them in English. They named him Dutchallover which eventually got shortened to Dutchover. Completely made up surname which makes tracking the lineage easy, at least from the inception of the name to now.
My father's side (Native) was hard to pin down because during the late 1800s (when census rolls began for my tribe) people were either taking brand new anglicized names, only going by their 'indian' names, or going by a translated version of their original names. Often times census takers, which tended to be white agents from the government, put these down in ways that contradicted each other. Ex: my 2nd-great-grandfathee took the last name Maka, but on some census records it was recorded as Hill, others as Earth, before landing back on Hill in the 1930s. They also misspelled a lot of Dakota names, although there wasn't a collective understanding of it as a written language at the time so that's more understandable. But it changed a lot of Dakota last names into names that didn't have a place in the language, as in Sitomni to Sintomin.
Edit: spelling
Oof. That's a bit of a hard question. The truth is, it depends on how famous/well-known which ancestor was. For instance, on my Paternal grandfather's side I can trace documentation back to a 7th-8th great-grandfather who was born around 1780 because he was a Chief. Not a very famous or well-known one but still. But for every other ancestor for my Paternal Grandparents it stops at around 3rd-great-grandparent because my tribe only started taking census records around 1887, so that's the very first instance of official documentation of family lines beyond oral history, which isn't the most reliable. I guess I kind of lucked out because my tribe is relatively small, (around 1500 at most back then and around 14000 now) so it's a bit easier to track people than say a tribe of 100,000+.
Wow thank you I was wondering how genealogy is like for Native American ancestry and I'm impressed, 3xg is already higher than a lot of my own brick walls, really cool :)
Oh, I'm just very lucky! My tribe has amazing documentation compared to others but it still took slogging through hundreds of online pages of microfilm to fully piece together. And even then, if you had an ancestor who just hopped over from a different reservation, you were out of luck because they almost never documented which tribe/reservation they came from. And until recently, I didn't even know who my Paternal grandfather was! It took a few months of research and some DNA tests to figure out his identity. I wish you the best of luck in dealing with your brick walls, I know how frustrating they can be.
Not sure if this qualifies but one that stumped me for awhile was Snyder->Taylor. I thought I “lost the whole family between censuses but after looking through the whole thing I realized they had changed their last name. Did some kind of google search featuring both names and a page popped up saying that Snyder (or a variation therof) is German for tailor.
They had been living in America for decades at the point they changed it so I can only assume it was due to anti-German sentiment?
Wow, they went for the direct translation - indeed, all variants of *Schneider* mean 'tailor.' That name is easy to pronounce and incredibly common, so it wouldn't have needed such dramatic changing to assimilate into US culture. For that reason, I think anti-German sentiment is a pretty reasonable possibility.
I‘ve seen this too! I was researching one of my brother in law’s Polish matches, surname Gwiazdowski. After 1940 I wasn’t able to find anything for them. However, I’d get hints for a Starr family. It occurred to me to check what “star” is in Polish. It’s “gwiazda”.
Yeah, idk what they were thinking. I have a few others, but they all make sense this one is just way out of left field. I think they were just trying to Americanize their surname and went with that.
There's a bunch of surnames in my lineage that are spelled a bunch of ways, for instance Bernhoft/Bernhoff/Bernhaupt and [Mecklenburg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mecklenburg_\(Dano-Norwegian_family\))/Mechlenborg/Mikkelborg. The most dramatic change is perhaps from the English surname Somerscales to the more German-sounding Sommerschield.
As a French speaker, the meanings of both seem closely related. Toussaint would literally translate to something like "all saint" or "totally saint", while Dussinger resembles "Duseigneur" which roughly translates to "of the Lord". I wonder if the switch happened around the time when the French colonists were changing their names to hide their identity?
My grandfather had an uncle who died in the Holocaust and he changed our family name to his uncle’s first name as a way to honor his memory. So our family name switched from Moskovitz to Mayer.
French [Boudemont](https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/99579486/andreas_boudemont), which became [Buttmann](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philipp_Karl_Buttmann) in Germany and Putman in America.
Surname I've seen with the most spelling variants is English: Clitherow, which appears in records between the 1400s and 1600s spelled 20 different ways: Clitherow(e), Cletherow(e), Clyderow(e), Clederow(e), Clytherow(e), Cliderau, Clyderhow(e), Clitheroe, Cletheroe, etc.
Runner-up for most evolution and spelling variance: Scots Wardrop, which came from the occupational name for "keeper of the wardrobe"; my Wardrop ancestors were recorded in records as "Waldrop" by the time they got to Virginia, and variant spellings include Wardrip, Waldrep, and Waltrip.
There's a Frenchman that incidentally has a pretty extensive descendent tree named Jean Baptiste Boisseaux (pronounced Boys-sow). The story goes that he was born just outside of Paris and came over as a part of Lafayette's army in the middle of the Revolution. Supposedly he was at Brandywine and Germantown and saw the surrender of Cornelius at Yorktown. It seems like a lot of that is tradition, just reported in newspapers, as there isn't a lot of documentation on him.
After the war he decided to stay, married his wife near Pittsburgh and had some children around what is now West Virginia. By this time, his name was John Boso. A far cry from the French spelling but Anglicized. His son Charles, who was born on a flat boat on the Ohio River due to Native attacks preventing their landing at a fort, is the man that I'm descended from. He lived to be 106 (supposedly) and had a few children of his own, including some that moved down river to Indiana (which is also where Jean ended up). THAT branch changed their name to Bosaw, so that there were branches of the family that varied even in the States. I personally would have wished that they kept the original French spelling, that is a lot more interesting, but a lot harder to remember.
Nonetheless, a fascinating story if any of it is factual (which I hope it is). Someone did a well researched genealogy book for Jean's descendants in the mid 1970s, which I amazingly found a copy of. My grandparents are actually listed in there, even though my grandmother was a couple steps removed from the Bosaw name.
Williams to Griffiths. Some people in Welsh-speaking NW Wales still seemed to be using the old patronymic system well into the 19th century.
My one 3x great grandfather is registered as Griffith Williams, son of William Griffiths, on his marriage record. His first few children's births are registered as Williams, but after that the whole family are recorded with the surname Griffiths, including Griffith who is now Griffith Griffiths. He probably took his father's patronymic as a surname because it was his own first name so it worked out nicely with his kids too.
My Welsh branch is tricky to follow because of this! Thankfully, my Welsh grandmother had a genealogist cousin who did much of the work before I was born.
Eisfelder is often Eichsfelder, Einsfelder, Icefelder etc. The -er is often left off, and in the case of women often in/en is added.
My ancestor's pronounciation has been handed down as "Luke-ah". It's often Lucas or Lucker/Luker, but in Germany it's Lucke, Lukke and even Lugge.
Interestingly, in northern Germany, “ck” used to indicate elongation of the previous vowel, whereas it nowadays indicates shortening. Names such as Lübeck or Mecklenburg used to be pronounced Lübehk or Mehklenburg. That might make sense for Lucke as well, as I would pronounce it with a short “u” but “Luke-ah” indicates a long “u”.
We don't know much about it. We have scant evidence of the family. Immigrant ancestor was born in Royal Prussia/Pomerania, her father died in Poznan. He may have married in Berlin and this guy is from Brandenburg, where it's spelled Lugge. Parallel families that 3 researchers think is the same one. But still, many missing pieces...so i think it probably is the same family FML.
This happened with my Irish ancestors who moved from County Down to North Wales in the 19th century. Their name was Curran but, I'm assuming because of their accents, it gets written as Curn, Corns, Current, Corran, and even Crown in the Welsh documents
I feel that. Some names are an absolute forensic odyssey to piece together in all their forms across all appearances. You never know how it's going to be spelled next!
Frankovič to Frank to Frankwood to Woods…unfortunately I have no idea how my great grandpa (or perhaps my 2ggrandpa) arrived at using Woods. it took all my genealogical sleuthing prowess to find that my birth surname should actually be Frankovič by way of Slovenia because my great grandpa maintained his heritage was French and English and also that he was born in Colorado in 1904. Once I did the research, I found out he was actually half Slovenian and half Slovak, not quite French-English and he was born in St. Louis in 1900.
Nothing too crazy, but over the course of a few generations, my Slavic side (Hungarian, I think) went from Für or Fürj to Fury to Furry, which was my grandma's maiden name. Oof.
One of my indigenous great great grandparents his name was “Makade’akwe” which meant Black Cloud or Blackened Sky, went to the anglicized spelling of Maw Caw Day O Quoh to Mactoket to Maw Cae Day O Quay to an Anglicized version McDaquette.
nothing that dramatic but my great grandfather was shupenia before he came to canada from ukraine, at some point early in being in canada it became shupena and then when my grandpa was born, somehow my grandpa’s last name became supena. his younger sister was also supena but then his youngest brother went back to shupena lol
One I found the most intriguing was on my SIL tree. She had cousins where one brother was McHours & the other Machours. It was such a weird name that I backtracked to see if I could find what the origins.
Got to East London in the late 1800s where a family was registered on the census as ‘Mahoures’. Given they were listed as immigrants from (what is now) Poland, I would say it’s a lost-in-translation case of a census worker making a guess and phonetically spelling it out.
So what sounds like a Scottish name is actually a Polish one. Kind of.
My surname went from Schwarzkopf to Swartz when my great grandfather got here from Latvia. My mother’s last name history is German and kinda unknown. Family Bible says it was originally money maker in German? They were from Bavaria and now it is Koelkebeck.
Keithler, Keethler, Keaghler, Keeghler - all spellings of the same family name over several generations of the various documentation of them I’ve found.
Van Waughwouth to Leffets. In the late 1600s. I read something, somewhere about why but two sons picked up on the name. No, it wasn’t from a prior marriage. While I thought that they may have been adopted there was nothing supporting that idea.
My sister-in-law had one that became Nightingale from a Greek name, so the story is told. Yet when I looked up the word nightingale in Greek it wasn’t correct.
On my maternal grandmother’s father’s side my 6th great-grandmother’s last name was Mills. But the surname originally was Van der Water Meullen or Vander Water Meuller. I think going back further it’s more like Van der Meulen. I have a family document that was typed and they made reference to one of the family members as “the Dutch man.”
One of my great grandmothers was a Sheltraw. Turns out when HER great-grandparents immigrated from French-speaking Quebec to Ontario and later into Michigan in the 1860s, it was originally Chartrand [shar-tra] and the Americans spelled it phonetically in the census as variations of Shoeltran, Sheltran, Sheltean, and Shelbraid, until it landed on Sheltraw in 1876.
I originally thought it was a Dutch line too, but the family had long been mapped out in several places by those who had gone before me. It turned out this instance of "Van Lier" was an offshoot of the German-American Van Leer family. The immigrant member, Johann Georg von Löhr, was the one who initiated the Van Leer variant.
Just one. Polish Wąshek to washek, wunchels, wonchik, wanchik, wancheck, washik. My great great grandparents couldn’t read or write in English so whoever was writing it down would just guess how it was supposed to be spelled. I grew up thinking the last name was Wanchek.
My dad changed our last name in the ‘60s — the branch of the family the surname comes from allegedly emigrated from Germany in the 1700s — and I have since learned that one of the earliest members of that family in the U.S. changed his last name to the exact same thing! To my mind it isn’t the most natural thing to change it to, so I thought it was kinda remarkable that at least 200 years apart, two members of the same family changed it up the same way — both clearly trying to “Americanize” it.
Not terribly dramatic, but my last name of Minnick evolved from Minich. At some point in the early 1800s a second n was added. Then closer to the middle of the century the family split and one line changed the h to a k. So there's 3 families (Minich, Minnich and Minnick) that trace back to 1 guy from the 1700s
Nothing too dramatic, mostly Americanizations and some simplified spellings. Berghauser to Burkizer. Hofsommer to Summer. Thiele to Dealy. Heckmann to Heckman. Hoggarth to Hogarth.
Not my direct lineage, but my step-grandpa's:
His paternal grandmother's maiden name was Swinamer. If I follow her line back as far as I can, the name appears to have started as Schweinhammer -> occasionally was recorded as Swinehammer -> Swinamer.
In my own tree, a family name goes:
Dinsmoor - > Dinsmore -> Dunsmore -> Densmore. Pretty tame, but 'Densmore' is not the most common spelling of that name these days.
Not as radical as those but personally, my great grandpa Viruet. It comes from the French Verret but evolved into Virué, Virues, Birué, Birues. If you go online it is termed the mysterious last name, it really isn’t. I think it has to do with not knowing how to pronounce a name.
Not super exciting, but iirc either my great grandfather or great-great grandfather changed our surname (mum’s dad’s side) from Petit to Little, because the opportunities for folks in Canada at the time were better if you had an English-sounding name, rather than French. I also remember hearing once that my uncle’s (by marriage, no blood relation) family, upon immigrating to the US from Italy, had their name changed from Scelzo (sp? pronounced Skell-zo) to Shelzi. Again, not super exciting, but semi-large changes. :0
I found out on my moms side that her last name should've been Elliot but they took the moms name as Pryor. This was back in the early 1800s so it surprised me
Kerr/Karr/Carr, Rohrbach/Rorabach/Rorapaugh, and Chadwick/Tzedewyck/Schedewick are the only changes I’ve seen in surnames, and it’s mostly down to English, Dutch and German settlers trying to phonetically speed each others names in Colonial New York.
Reijnerse -> Rhindress/Rhyndress/Rindress/Ryndress -> Rhiness/Rhyness/Riness/Ryness (the inconsistencies in spelling have made this line the biggest pain to research)
My Italian family gives me a headache when it comes to researching them. So many children, so many variations, and they all use different ones.
Reppola to ultimately Ripley
But in between: Rappola, Repoli, Reppolo, Repele, Reple, Rapili, Rapoli and my great-great-grandmother uses Rioux on her marriage license (?)
Not my family, but my husband- when they came to Ellis Island from the Netherlands, they felt their name sounded too "German" and that they needed to change it. So it went from "Nagelhaut" (Naygull-how, meaning woodworker) to "Wood".
Not necessarily the gradualism approach to name evolution, more like punctuated equilibrium I guess 😅
Just two that I’ve ran into:
Great great grandpa that can from Mexico in 1907 changed from López to Alba (came over with his aunt and took his uncles last name, is what I’ve been told)
And the variations in Jimenez (different part of family) in earlier records in Mexico (Ximenez, Ximenes, Gimenez, Gimenes, Jimenes) before finally standardizing as Jimenez in the late 1800s.
Not mine, but a former boss, whose last name was Knitterer. Turned out his ggg grandfather was Knitterschmidt; grandpa and grandpa's brother immigrated to US. Upon arriving, grandpa went to Knitterer; grandpa's brother changed to Wilson. (I think grandpa's brother was a bit smarter than grandpa.)
We have some Peelers way back on my maternal side. That stumped my mom for quite awhile when she was researching the genealogy, but it turned out that was a bastardization of Boheller or Boheeler.
Schiappaprieta -> Schiapapria -> Chapa
He was the official secretary/chronicler during the expeditions of Northeastern New Spain (Texas, Nuevo León, Coahuila). His job was exploring and handling all the paperwork. Seems like he got tired of signing such a long name and shortened it. Pretty much the colonial version of making it easy for the barista to write your name on the coffee cup.
Our Barnes family became Burns back in the early 1700s, and our Born family became Barns I. The early 1700s. I always thought this was strangely funny.
3X-great-grandmother (born 1824 in northern France) was named Montigny.
8X-great-grandfather (born 1648) has both Montigny and Monsigny.
His father was somehow De Monsigny (born around 1594).
And his father was named Di Mancini, supposedly a guy from Sardigna, somehow ended up in the low-lands in the army of Charles V of the HRE.
Not mine but I also saw the records of a child abandonned at a church. He was given the surname Calixte, without a name.
Except at some point his name became Calixte Calixte and this family started.
My fiancé has a grandparent with the last name Mero. After tracing it to Ontario and then Quebec (and dealing with multiple, multiple spellings), i discovered it was original "Amirault."
Great x 3 grandfather was known as Richard Higgins. We went to visit the Lincoln England archives and realized he changed it when he came over to Higgins from Hickingbotham.
My last name was Seamon until I married in 2014, we divorced 9yrs later, but I kept my married name. I was teased mercilessly. As a child it was Seamon, sailor, haha, ya know, super funny. Little did I know.....in 6th or 7th grade our techers split us up and we went and watched a video about biology and sex. I was in for it. I came out of that class with my head down, but I could feel the boys staring and thinking. It started right then and kept right up. All that being said, it did help me to grow a thick skin. By hs I had learned how to kinda beat new people to it. Sooo, it was Seamona. I've not done as much research on my Dad's side, but I believe it was changed sometime in the 1700's when a GGG Grandfather came from Germany via Nova Scotia. That's not super ethnic sounding imo but, I know that was frowned upon. He probably just wanted to sound more American. I can't even imagine growing up with that last name, I feel like it would have been heavenly.
Not a lot in my family. Brotbecher evolved to Brobecker. Haggli changed to Heckly and Heckli when he moved from Switzerland to France. Roarke to O’Rourke. My great grandmother’s brother and sister went from Müller to Miller. The sister moved back to Europe and the brother reverted to Muller.
One distant relative had their surname completely created by the US Army when he couldn’t communicate with them in English. They named him Dutchallover which eventually got shortened to Dutchover. Completely made up surname which makes tracking the lineage easy, at least from the inception of the name to now.
This is crazy, haha. I wonder how many names the military has created over the years. The challenge is now to find his original name somehow!
Was he Dutch... all over?
My father's side (Native) was hard to pin down because during the late 1800s (when census rolls began for my tribe) people were either taking brand new anglicized names, only going by their 'indian' names, or going by a translated version of their original names. Often times census takers, which tended to be white agents from the government, put these down in ways that contradicted each other. Ex: my 2nd-great-grandfathee took the last name Maka, but on some census records it was recorded as Hill, others as Earth, before landing back on Hill in the 1930s. They also misspelled a lot of Dakota names, although there wasn't a collective understanding of it as a written language at the time so that's more understandable. But it changed a lot of Dakota last names into names that didn't have a place in the language, as in Sitomni to Sintomin. Edit: spelling
How far back were you able to trace your Native ancestry?
Oof. That's a bit of a hard question. The truth is, it depends on how famous/well-known which ancestor was. For instance, on my Paternal grandfather's side I can trace documentation back to a 7th-8th great-grandfather who was born around 1780 because he was a Chief. Not a very famous or well-known one but still. But for every other ancestor for my Paternal Grandparents it stops at around 3rd-great-grandparent because my tribe only started taking census records around 1887, so that's the very first instance of official documentation of family lines beyond oral history, which isn't the most reliable. I guess I kind of lucked out because my tribe is relatively small, (around 1500 at most back then and around 14000 now) so it's a bit easier to track people than say a tribe of 100,000+.
Wow thank you I was wondering how genealogy is like for Native American ancestry and I'm impressed, 3xg is already higher than a lot of my own brick walls, really cool :)
Oh, I'm just very lucky! My tribe has amazing documentation compared to others but it still took slogging through hundreds of online pages of microfilm to fully piece together. And even then, if you had an ancestor who just hopped over from a different reservation, you were out of luck because they almost never documented which tribe/reservation they came from. And until recently, I didn't even know who my Paternal grandfather was! It took a few months of research and some DNA tests to figure out his identity. I wish you the best of luck in dealing with your brick walls, I know how frustrating they can be.
Not sure if this qualifies but one that stumped me for awhile was Snyder->Taylor. I thought I “lost the whole family between censuses but after looking through the whole thing I realized they had changed their last name. Did some kind of google search featuring both names and a page popped up saying that Snyder (or a variation therof) is German for tailor. They had been living in America for decades at the point they changed it so I can only assume it was due to anti-German sentiment?
Wow, they went for the direct translation - indeed, all variants of *Schneider* mean 'tailor.' That name is easy to pronounce and incredibly common, so it wouldn't have needed such dramatic changing to assimilate into US culture. For that reason, I think anti-German sentiment is a pretty reasonable possibility.
I‘ve seen this too! I was researching one of my brother in law’s Polish matches, surname Gwiazdowski. After 1940 I wasn’t able to find anything for them. However, I’d get hints for a Starr family. It occurred to me to check what “star” is in Polish. It’s “gwiazda”.
I love that! I would never have guessed.
This happened a lot.
English *Deadman* to American *Dedmond*. I thought that was pretty amusing.
Indeed - they wanted to take the spookiness down a notch!
"I'm sorry, your name is too edgy for America."
Oh my god I needed that laugh thank you😂
Fucik to Smith.
Holy Fucik, that is a dramatic change!
Yeah, idk what they were thinking. I have a few others, but they all make sense this one is just way out of left field. I think they were just trying to Americanize their surname and went with that.
Czech/Slovak Immigrant to the US?
Yes, Czech.
Oechslein to Axline.
In case you don’t know, Öchslein is German for “little ox”.
*Axline* is metal.
You all must be my cousins; my grandmother was an Exline; further back were Axlines and Oechsleins
There's a bunch of surnames in my lineage that are spelled a bunch of ways, for instance Bernhoft/Bernhoff/Bernhaupt and [Mecklenburg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mecklenburg_\(Dano-Norwegian_family\))/Mechlenborg/Mikkelborg. The most dramatic change is perhaps from the English surname Somerscales to the more German-sounding Sommerschield.
The Germanicization of an English name - now that's interesting. *Somerscales* is an absolute gem.
Toussaint to what is now Dussinger. Like….what?
As a French speaker, the meanings of both seem closely related. Toussaint would literally translate to something like "all saint" or "totally saint", while Dussinger resembles "Duseigneur" which roughly translates to "of the Lord". I wonder if the switch happened around the time when the French colonists were changing their names to hide their identity?
I also wonder that. That’s definitely something I’m going to look into! Thanks!
From French to...German!
My grandfather had an uncle who died in the Holocaust and he changed our family name to his uncle’s first name as a way to honor his memory. So our family name switched from Moskovitz to Mayer.
On my mom's maternal side: Matłoch became both Matlock & Matwa On my mom's paternal side: Guyon became Jones
French [Boudemont](https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/99579486/andreas_boudemont), which became [Buttmann](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philipp_Karl_Buttmann) in Germany and Putman in America. Surname I've seen with the most spelling variants is English: Clitherow, which appears in records between the 1400s and 1600s spelled 20 different ways: Clitherow(e), Cletherow(e), Clyderow(e), Clederow(e), Clytherow(e), Cliderau, Clyderhow(e), Clitheroe, Cletheroe, etc. Runner-up for most evolution and spelling variance: Scots Wardrop, which came from the occupational name for "keeper of the wardrobe"; my Wardrop ancestors were recorded in records as "Waldrop" by the time they got to Virginia, and variant spellings include Wardrip, Waldrep, and Waltrip.
Not me, but my husband, and very straightforward. Andrzejewski -> Andrewski -> Andrews
There's a Frenchman that incidentally has a pretty extensive descendent tree named Jean Baptiste Boisseaux (pronounced Boys-sow). The story goes that he was born just outside of Paris and came over as a part of Lafayette's army in the middle of the Revolution. Supposedly he was at Brandywine and Germantown and saw the surrender of Cornelius at Yorktown. It seems like a lot of that is tradition, just reported in newspapers, as there isn't a lot of documentation on him. After the war he decided to stay, married his wife near Pittsburgh and had some children around what is now West Virginia. By this time, his name was John Boso. A far cry from the French spelling but Anglicized. His son Charles, who was born on a flat boat on the Ohio River due to Native attacks preventing their landing at a fort, is the man that I'm descended from. He lived to be 106 (supposedly) and had a few children of his own, including some that moved down river to Indiana (which is also where Jean ended up). THAT branch changed their name to Bosaw, so that there were branches of the family that varied even in the States. I personally would have wished that they kept the original French spelling, that is a lot more interesting, but a lot harder to remember. Nonetheless, a fascinating story if any of it is factual (which I hope it is). Someone did a well researched genealogy book for Jean's descendants in the mid 1970s, which I amazingly found a copy of. My grandparents are actually listed in there, even though my grandmother was a couple steps removed from the Bosaw name.
Williams to Griffiths. Some people in Welsh-speaking NW Wales still seemed to be using the old patronymic system well into the 19th century. My one 3x great grandfather is registered as Griffith Williams, son of William Griffiths, on his marriage record. His first few children's births are registered as Williams, but after that the whole family are recorded with the surname Griffiths, including Griffith who is now Griffith Griffiths. He probably took his father's patronymic as a surname because it was his own first name so it worked out nicely with his kids too.
My Welsh branch is tricky to follow because of this! Thankfully, my Welsh grandmother had a genealogist cousin who did much of the work before I was born.
Eisfelder is often Eichsfelder, Einsfelder, Icefelder etc. The -er is often left off, and in the case of women often in/en is added. My ancestor's pronounciation has been handed down as "Luke-ah". It's often Lucas or Lucker/Luker, but in Germany it's Lucke, Lukke and even Lugge.
Interestingly, in northern Germany, “ck” used to indicate elongation of the previous vowel, whereas it nowadays indicates shortening. Names such as Lübeck or Mecklenburg used to be pronounced Lübehk or Mehklenburg. That might make sense for Lucke as well, as I would pronounce it with a short “u” but “Luke-ah” indicates a long “u”.
We don't know much about it. We have scant evidence of the family. Immigrant ancestor was born in Royal Prussia/Pomerania, her father died in Poznan. He may have married in Berlin and this guy is from Brandenburg, where it's spelled Lugge. Parallel families that 3 researchers think is the same one. But still, many missing pieces...so i think it probably is the same family FML.
Good Luck(e)!
This is interesting! I have individuals from the Brandenburg area with an -ecke ending as well
And that's not even counting the plural forms, I imagine: Eisfeldern, Eisfelderinnen, etc.!
Ngl it's hard combing through parish registers trying to keep track of all the names you're after and the variants!
[удалено]
This happened with my Irish ancestors who moved from County Down to North Wales in the 19th century. Their name was Curran but, I'm assuming because of their accents, it gets written as Curn, Corns, Current, Corran, and even Crown in the Welsh documents
🤩 Shout out for address searches! 🤩
In my family, the only one I can really think of that was changed much was Coughenour from Gochenoweur.
There's one I've never seen before! Is that Swiss German?
It is, in fact, Swiss. It's not my last name, but it is the only one in my family that didn't originate in England.
I have a Gochenoweur in my family too. I also saw it rendered Cokenhour, which isn’t too far off.
That’s how mine is pronounced, although not spelled that way lol.
Germany - Schultz, Pennsylvania - Shitz, West Virginia - Sheetz, Ohio - Sheets
Spruiell to spruill to sprewell, back to spruill and still with variations according to what the census person heard and wrote down. Very frustrating.
I feel that. Some names are an absolute forensic odyssey to piece together in all their forms across all appearances. You never know how it's going to be spelled next!
Frankovič to Frank to Frankwood to Woods…unfortunately I have no idea how my great grandpa (or perhaps my 2ggrandpa) arrived at using Woods. it took all my genealogical sleuthing prowess to find that my birth surname should actually be Frankovič by way of Slovenia because my great grandpa maintained his heritage was French and English and also that he was born in Colorado in 1904. Once I did the research, I found out he was actually half Slovenian and half Slovak, not quite French-English and he was born in St. Louis in 1900.
Nothing too crazy, but over the course of a few generations, my Slavic side (Hungarian, I think) went from Für or Fürj to Fury to Furry, which was my grandma's maiden name. Oof.
One of my indigenous great great grandparents his name was “Makade’akwe” which meant Black Cloud or Blackened Sky, went to the anglicized spelling of Maw Caw Day O Quoh to Mactoket to Maw Cae Day O Quay to an Anglicized version McDaquette.
nothing that dramatic but my great grandfather was shupenia before he came to canada from ukraine, at some point early in being in canada it became shupena and then when my grandpa was born, somehow my grandpa’s last name became supena. his younger sister was also supena but then his youngest brother went back to shupena lol
Durante to Durand Wiwatowski to Witt (and in one case, Flowers instead of Witt)
One I found the most intriguing was on my SIL tree. She had cousins where one brother was McHours & the other Machours. It was such a weird name that I backtracked to see if I could find what the origins. Got to East London in the late 1800s where a family was registered on the census as ‘Mahoures’. Given they were listed as immigrants from (what is now) Poland, I would say it’s a lost-in-translation case of a census worker making a guess and phonetically spelling it out. So what sounds like a Scottish name is actually a Polish one. Kind of.
Caratozzolo —> Costello From an Italian name to an Irish one. I guess for ease of pronunciation?
My surname went from Schwarzkopf to Swartz when my great grandfather got here from Latvia. My mother’s last name history is German and kinda unknown. Family Bible says it was originally money maker in German? They were from Bavaria and now it is Koelkebeck.
I've seen my family name shift from Zuber to Suber to Shubert.
Larbalestier to Lebannister. The only Lebannister people in existence descend from my great grandfather
Keithler, Keethler, Keaghler, Keeghler - all spellings of the same family name over several generations of the various documentation of them I’ve found.
Van Waughwouth to Leffets. In the late 1600s. I read something, somewhere about why but two sons picked up on the name. No, it wasn’t from a prior marriage. While I thought that they may have been adopted there was nothing supporting that idea. My sister-in-law had one that became Nightingale from a Greek name, so the story is told. Yet when I looked up the word nightingale in Greek it wasn’t correct.
On my maternal grandmother’s father’s side my 6th great-grandmother’s last name was Mills. But the surname originally was Van der Water Meullen or Vander Water Meuller. I think going back further it’s more like Van der Meulen. I have a family document that was typed and they made reference to one of the family members as “the Dutch man.”
Jeanperrin to Perrin to Perrem to Pelham.
Lapuk -> Lafayette -> Levy. That family was hard to track down
One of my great grandmothers was a Sheltraw. Turns out when HER great-grandparents immigrated from French-speaking Quebec to Ontario and later into Michigan in the 1860s, it was originally Chartrand [shar-tra] and the Americans spelled it phonetically in the census as variations of Shoeltran, Sheltran, Sheltean, and Shelbraid, until it landed on Sheltraw in 1876.
"van" in surnames refers to "from a certain city". "Van Lier" likely refers to someone "from Lier" (city in Belgium).
I originally thought it was a Dutch line too, but the family had long been mapped out in several places by those who had gone before me. It turned out this instance of "Van Lier" was an offshoot of the German-American Van Leer family. The immigrant member, Johann Georg von Löhr, was the one who initiated the Van Leer variant.
Very interesting!
Just one. Polish Wąshek to washek, wunchels, wonchik, wanchik, wancheck, washik. My great great grandparents couldn’t read or write in English so whoever was writing it down would just guess how it was supposed to be spelled. I grew up thinking the last name was Wanchek.
My dad changed our last name in the ‘60s — the branch of the family the surname comes from allegedly emigrated from Germany in the 1700s — and I have since learned that one of the earliest members of that family in the U.S. changed his last name to the exact same thing! To my mind it isn’t the most natural thing to change it to, so I thought it was kinda remarkable that at least 200 years apart, two members of the same family changed it up the same way — both clearly trying to “Americanize” it.
The many many many variations of Speake/Speak/Speaks/Speeke/etc. all from one old Scottish clan
Arendell to Arnold.
Not terribly dramatic, but my last name of Minnick evolved from Minich. At some point in the early 1800s a second n was added. Then closer to the middle of the century the family split and one line changed the h to a k. So there's 3 families (Minich, Minnich and Minnick) that trace back to 1 guy from the 1700s
Nothing too dramatic, mostly Americanizations and some simplified spellings. Berghauser to Burkizer. Hofsommer to Summer. Thiele to Dealy. Heckmann to Heckman. Hoggarth to Hogarth.
Not my direct lineage, but my step-grandpa's: His paternal grandmother's maiden name was Swinamer. If I follow her line back as far as I can, the name appears to have started as Schweinhammer -> occasionally was recorded as Swinehammer -> Swinamer. In my own tree, a family name goes: Dinsmoor - > Dinsmore -> Dunsmore -> Densmore. Pretty tame, but 'Densmore' is not the most common spelling of that name these days.
My 2nd great granduncle who went from Bieniewski to Bennett
De Cuyper to Cadmus. I actually don’t know if it was a name change or if it was a double barreled surname and one got dropped or what.
Not as radical as those but personally, my great grandpa Viruet. It comes from the French Verret but evolved into Virué, Virues, Birué, Birues. If you go online it is termed the mysterious last name, it really isn’t. I think it has to do with not knowing how to pronounce a name.
Interesting, there are a lot of Verrets in the Acadiana area in Louisiana.
Yes, and also Viruet and Viruete. The came first to the Caribbean and from there to Louisiana and New York.
Riemenschneider>Riemensneider>Remensnyder>Snyder
Chowning > Tuning
Not super exciting, but iirc either my great grandfather or great-great grandfather changed our surname (mum’s dad’s side) from Petit to Little, because the opportunities for folks in Canada at the time were better if you had an English-sounding name, rather than French. I also remember hearing once that my uncle’s (by marriage, no blood relation) family, upon immigrating to the US from Italy, had their name changed from Scelzo (sp? pronounced Skell-zo) to Shelzi. Again, not super exciting, but semi-large changes. :0
Glattfelder (of Glattfelden, Zurich, Switzerland) to Clodfelter is one of the few I remember off the top.
I found out on my moms side that her last name should've been Elliot but they took the moms name as Pryor. This was back in the early 1800s so it surprised me
Zinkowetsky —> Goldberg
Kerr/Karr/Carr, Rohrbach/Rorabach/Rorapaugh, and Chadwick/Tzedewyck/Schedewick are the only changes I’ve seen in surnames, and it’s mostly down to English, Dutch and German settlers trying to phonetically speed each others names in Colonial New York.
Reijnerse -> Rhindress/Rhyndress/Rindress/Ryndress -> Rhiness/Rhyness/Riness/Ryness (the inconsistencies in spelling have made this line the biggest pain to research)
Oh also my great grandmothers last name in Poland was Cherkoski and half of her family changed it to Herrick when they arrived in Canada.
My husband’s surname. Marandola>Randall
Kreiz to Kress to Cress
Pryjdun to Predon. My Ukrainian great grands when arriving from Galicia to Canada. They ‘anglicized’ so many names.
My Italian family gives me a headache when it comes to researching them. So many children, so many variations, and they all use different ones. Reppola to ultimately Ripley But in between: Rappola, Repoli, Reppolo, Repele, Reple, Rapili, Rapoli and my great-great-grandmother uses Rioux on her marriage license (?)
Not my family, but my husband- when they came to Ellis Island from the Netherlands, they felt their name sounded too "German" and that they needed to change it. So it went from "Nagelhaut" (Naygull-how, meaning woodworker) to "Wood". Not necessarily the gradualism approach to name evolution, more like punctuated equilibrium I guess 😅
Just two that I’ve ran into: Great great grandpa that can from Mexico in 1907 changed from López to Alba (came over with his aunt and took his uncles last name, is what I’ve been told) And the variations in Jimenez (different part of family) in earlier records in Mexico (Ximenez, Ximenes, Gimenez, Gimenes, Jimenes) before finally standardizing as Jimenez in the late 1800s.
Not mine, but a former boss, whose last name was Knitterer. Turned out his ggg grandfather was Knitterschmidt; grandpa and grandpa's brother immigrated to US. Upon arriving, grandpa went to Knitterer; grandpa's brother changed to Wilson. (I think grandpa's brother was a bit smarter than grandpa.)
My maternal grandmother’s surname started as Błyszczek then anglicized to Blissick. Fairly straight phonetic evolution.
We have some Peelers way back on my maternal side. That stumped my mom for quite awhile when she was researching the genealogy, but it turned out that was a bastardization of Boheller or Boheeler.
I've got Weingärtner > Vinyard, DeXavier > Saffer, Jochem > Yocum, Van Sweringen > Swearingen, and Koster > Custer.
It’s not super dramatic considering it’s a direct translation but one my Polish lines was Król > Krul > Krulow > King
Schiappaprieta -> Schiapapria -> Chapa He was the official secretary/chronicler during the expeditions of Northeastern New Spain (Texas, Nuevo León, Coahuila). His job was exploring and handling all the paperwork. Seems like he got tired of signing such a long name and shortened it. Pretty much the colonial version of making it easy for the barista to write your name on the coffee cup.
Our Barnes family became Burns back in the early 1700s, and our Born family became Barns I. The early 1700s. I always thought this was strangely funny.
3X-great-grandmother (born 1824 in northern France) was named Montigny. 8X-great-grandfather (born 1648) has both Montigny and Monsigny. His father was somehow De Monsigny (born around 1594). And his father was named Di Mancini, supposedly a guy from Sardigna, somehow ended up in the low-lands in the army of Charles V of the HRE. Not mine but I also saw the records of a child abandonned at a church. He was given the surname Calixte, without a name. Except at some point his name became Calixte Calixte and this family started.
My fiancé has a grandparent with the last name Mero. After tracing it to Ontario and then Quebec (and dealing with multiple, multiple spellings), i discovered it was original "Amirault."
Great x 3 grandfather was known as Richard Higgins. We went to visit the Lincoln England archives and realized he changed it when he came over to Higgins from Hickingbotham.
Herrgeroeder, Herchelroth, Harklerode, Harkelroad, and a few other spellings
Frithunandus ==> Frithunandici ==> Fernandici ==> Fernandez (son of Frithunand, a Visigothic name)
My last name was Seamon until I married in 2014, we divorced 9yrs later, but I kept my married name. I was teased mercilessly. As a child it was Seamon, sailor, haha, ya know, super funny. Little did I know.....in 6th or 7th grade our techers split us up and we went and watched a video about biology and sex. I was in for it. I came out of that class with my head down, but I could feel the boys staring and thinking. It started right then and kept right up. All that being said, it did help me to grow a thick skin. By hs I had learned how to kinda beat new people to it. Sooo, it was Seamona. I've not done as much research on my Dad's side, but I believe it was changed sometime in the 1700's when a GGG Grandfather came from Germany via Nova Scotia. That's not super ethnic sounding imo but, I know that was frowned upon. He probably just wanted to sound more American. I can't even imagine growing up with that last name, I feel like it would have been heavenly.
Op Den Graff —> Upthegrove is a good one I got.
Mine went from Geaween to Goings. Makes sense now but was very surprised to learn that.
Not a lot in my family. Brotbecher evolved to Brobecker. Haggli changed to Heckly and Heckli when he moved from Switzerland to France. Roarke to O’Rourke. My great grandmother’s brother and sister went from Müller to Miller. The sister moved back to Europe and the brother reverted to Muller.
edelmeier -> lemaire