Variations in Name Spellings

[justval249]

Can I just ask how you all deal with it when there are lots of different variations of spellings for a name in various records? It makes it really hard to keep tabs and find the right piece of information.

My 4x Great Grandfather was a man named Joseph Aaronricks ( that is how our family have always spelled it but hey, we could be wrong too) but in the records I have seen variations:

Arronicks, Aronoricks, Aronicks, Aronix, Aronack, Arromack, Aronwicks, Arrionack, Aariolliack, Aaronix, Arenarix, Arroniack and they are just the ones I can remember.

Because I do a wide search to try and compensate for the spelling variations, I end up with thousands of extra names like Warner, Warrington, Arrowsmith etc. Is there any way I can filter this better or do I just have to suck it up?

I have tried narrowing filters before but then it comes up with Zero results. It is making it really hard to find anything out about where he was before he died in Warrington in 1808.

Thank you in advance.

[GallowayLass]

I use the earliest recorded version for an individual which is usually baptism and/or birth. I record any variations in the fact field ‘aka’ and include date and name of the document where I found it and also a source.
I use FTM 2016

[julite]

I sometimes use asterisks mixed in with what I know to be definite letters. This seems to reduce the number of 'how on earth has that come up as a similar/sounds like' option.

[Sylvia C]

Like julite, I often use the wild card * which stands for any number of missing letters. Most search engines usually require at least 3 letters be present

eg, one of my ancestral names was Schofield, but it turns out that some early members used Scholefield. Plus, -field is often mis-spelled in records.

So, I usually search for Scho*f*ld.

I have also tried S*o*f*ld


In your case, there are some letters that seem always to be there, so I would use those as the basis

eg, A*r*n*k* and see what happens

[justval249]

Thank you all so much, I never even thought of asterisks to help.
I found a few more variations yesterday of the name including Aaredicus! How that is even remotely like Aaronricks I will never know but it is definitely them.

[Macbev]

In some records, I search feeding in every detail OTHER than the surname......have occasionally found missing persons that way if they have been mis-transcribed

[Anne in Carlisle]

You can, like Bev says, just search on forename and date and place. This is good specially if one of the family has a less common forename. Also search for baptisms using place and parents' forenames.
Obviously this works less well if they lived in London :(
Anne

[herky]

In some records, I search feeding in every detail OTHER than the surname......have occasionally found missing persons that way if they have been mis-transcribed

Totally agree - I couldn't find my great gran's birth cert for years then Scotlands People allowed a search with no surname and up she popped.
Her mum's husband was not her father (her marriage and death records were also wrong) and I also found 3 other siblings with this new man's name.
He then disappeared and they all reverted to the husband's surname. Very strange

However that is going off the point - sorry - yes, surnames can be very badly mis-transcribed so doing a search without a surname is a good tip.