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ArchivesPerils of taking census records as the gospel truth
I've been having fun the last couple of days checking out the names in a book called Bad Baby Names published by two guys who work for the website Ancestry.com. The book is a compilation of interesting names they have found in the records on that site. The great majority of those records are US Census Records.
I should put in a plug for Ancestry.com as I have realized even more than before what a gold mine of data they have. You can look at the original census records for the entire United States, and they have the indexes of the records completely computerized so you can look up people by either last or first name, or any combination of the same, and find out how many times such a name occurs in the indexes to the censuses.
However, what a bit of research shows is that a lot of the supposed "real names" they have in the book are simply wrong. The most obvious example is "Hades Fryher", the supposed name of a girl living on Long Island in 1920. If you look at the record, at first glance the first name does seem to be Hades. But if you then pay attention to how that particular census taker wrote his capital G's, you can figure out that this girl was named Gladys, not Hades. His weird "G" and the "l" get together to look like a very fancy sort of H, but that's not what he meant to write. And that is completely confirmed by finding the family in the 1930 census, when the census taker that year had much better penmanship and clearly wrote "Gladys" as the name.
Before recent times census takers were not hired because they had good penmanship or good spelling. And they wrote down what they heard a name to be. People at different times use different forms of their names, and census takers freqeuntly misheard, misinterpreted, and misspelled what they were told. And they were more likely to do this if the name was uncommon and so one they were unfamiliar with.
I checked this out by looking up the records for one of my own great-aunts in the US censuses on Ancestry.com. My great-grandparents named her after a family friend called Alexander Tennant, and her official first and middle names were Alexandria Tennant. As with many people born in the late 19th century, she was usually called by her middle name. So the family knew her as Tennant or Tennie most of the time.
In the 1900 census, she is listed as "Alexander T.", as if her parents had given her the normal male form of the name. So someone looking for "girls given boys' names" in 1900 would think she was a case of that, when she wasn't.
In the 1910 census, she is listed as "Tennet". And whoever prepared the index, not being familiar with that, read it as "Jennet". So if you look for her according to her real name in the 1910 index, you won't find her.
In the 1920 census, she is listed as "Alexandria T.". That is her real name, but perhaps a bit misleading, since she wasn't called Alexandria in everyday life.
In the 1930 census, she is listed as "Tennant". However, once again the indexer misread the census taker's bad handwriting and came up with a name he or she was more familiar with, and so in the index to the 1930 census she is listed as "Toussaint"! And people will wonder why a 35 year old woman in rural West Virginia had a male French first name, if they simply count up the Toussaints found in the index.
So one really has to be careful in interpreting these records. Here my great-aunt is listed in four different ways -- six different ways if you count the indexes -- and someone who didn't already know what her real name was would be very confused.
I should put in a plug for Ancestry.com as I have realized even more than before what a gold mine of data they have. You can look at the original census records for the entire United States, and they have the indexes of the records completely computerized so you can look up people by either last or first name, or any combination of the same, and find out how many times such a name occurs in the indexes to the censuses.
However, what a bit of research shows is that a lot of the supposed "real names" they have in the book are simply wrong. The most obvious example is "Hades Fryher", the supposed name of a girl living on Long Island in 1920. If you look at the record, at first glance the first name does seem to be Hades. But if you then pay attention to how that particular census taker wrote his capital G's, you can figure out that this girl was named Gladys, not Hades. His weird "G" and the "l" get together to look like a very fancy sort of H, but that's not what he meant to write. And that is completely confirmed by finding the family in the 1930 census, when the census taker that year had much better penmanship and clearly wrote "Gladys" as the name.
Before recent times census takers were not hired because they had good penmanship or good spelling. And they wrote down what they heard a name to be. People at different times use different forms of their names, and census takers freqeuntly misheard, misinterpreted, and misspelled what they were told. And they were more likely to do this if the name was uncommon and so one they were unfamiliar with.
I checked this out by looking up the records for one of my own great-aunts in the US censuses on Ancestry.com. My great-grandparents named her after a family friend called Alexander Tennant, and her official first and middle names were Alexandria Tennant. As with many people born in the late 19th century, she was usually called by her middle name. So the family knew her as Tennant or Tennie most of the time.
In the 1900 census, she is listed as "Alexander T.", as if her parents had given her the normal male form of the name. So someone looking for "girls given boys' names" in 1900 would think she was a case of that, when she wasn't.
In the 1910 census, she is listed as "Tennet". And whoever prepared the index, not being familiar with that, read it as "Jennet". So if you look for her according to her real name in the 1910 index, you won't find her.
In the 1920 census, she is listed as "Alexandria T.". That is her real name, but perhaps a bit misleading, since she wasn't called Alexandria in everyday life.
In the 1930 census, she is listed as "Tennant". However, once again the indexer misread the census taker's bad handwriting and came up with a name he or she was more familiar with, and so in the index to the 1930 census she is listed as "Toussaint"! And people will wonder why a 35 year old woman in rural West Virginia had a male French first name, if they simply count up the Toussaints found in the index.
So one really has to be careful in interpreting these records. Here my great-aunt is listed in four different ways -- six different ways if you count the indexes -- and someone who didn't already know what her real name was would be very confused.
This message was edited 3/20/2008, 12:39 PM
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Replies
Thats very interesting that you say that, since something similar, thought probably not on a Census level, happens with my cousin. Her name, (for sake of privacy and use) is legally registerd as Rajala, a form of my grandmother's name. Her middle name is registered as my uncle's first name (altered for privacy) Sundar, and her last name is M*********. However, all through her family, she is known by another name, also beginning with S, (altered) Sushmila, to differentiate her from my grandmother. As a result, she was always Rajala S. M******. Her middle name was her father's name because in India, where she was born and lived for one year, the father's name is the child's last name. However, she was never aware of this, and for a long time presumed her middle name S. stood for Sushmila, and until age 16, signed off as such, until things went haywire with her standardized testing; herein, she realized what the S. in her name *really* stood for.
Ancestry.com is undoubtedly valuable. However, it has never been of much use to me, since it only has my parents ;-) In fact, my father doesn't even have a birth certificate in India. If I were to return home and dig up my genealogy, I'd run into hectic naming problems (similar to the one I discussed above) because of the chaotic name practices in India. That, and the lack of written records.
Ancestry.com is undoubtedly valuable. However, it has never been of much use to me, since it only has my parents ;-) In fact, my father doesn't even have a birth certificate in India. If I were to return home and dig up my genealogy, I'd run into hectic naming problems (similar to the one I discussed above) because of the chaotic name practices in India. That, and the lack of written records.
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Just pointing out: the statement `in India, the father's name is the child's last name' applies only to some parts of India. In other parts, names are more complicated so that one can get a name like Madhabhushi Venkata Narasimha Sesha Pundarikaksha Madhava Ravikumar (we used to call him A-Z though it does not literally contain all the letters), and on the other hand, some people may go by a simple name like Shubhranshu with no other part.
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As a practiser of genealogy, I am also familiar with this phenomenon. The further you go back in time, the more often you see this occurring. It most often happens in the church books, from when civil registration (which Napoleon introduced) didn't exist yet.
I find it interesting, though, that this mostly happens with feminine names - especially with the most common ones. Anna, Maria and Joanna were the most popular feminine names in my country in at least the last three centuries. If a woman was named Anna Maria [surname], she would often get mentioned as only Anna [surname], or Maria [surname] or as Maria Anna [surname]. I won't even start on the nicknames that were sometimes written down instead of the legal name. And in the case of a woman named Joanna, she will often be mentioned as just Anna as well.
Because of that, I think those common names are a real pain when you have to identify the parents of someone with such a common name (especially when the surname is very common as well). After all, because the name is so common, you will find that there are more married couples that can be the potential parents of a person. At least with a name like Judith or Thecla it is much easier to identify a person's parents.
For the men, Joannes (later Johannes became a more common spelling) was most common and the name often gives the same problems as Anna, Maria and Joanna for the women. But at least masculine names are more stable, as their names tend to be written down correctly more often. Maybe that's because people back then thought that women weren't worth the effort (you especially see that in the church books, where the surname of the mother is often omitted in the baptism records).
I find it interesting, though, that this mostly happens with feminine names - especially with the most common ones. Anna, Maria and Joanna were the most popular feminine names in my country in at least the last three centuries. If a woman was named Anna Maria [surname], she would often get mentioned as only Anna [surname], or Maria [surname] or as Maria Anna [surname]. I won't even start on the nicknames that were sometimes written down instead of the legal name. And in the case of a woman named Joanna, she will often be mentioned as just Anna as well.
Because of that, I think those common names are a real pain when you have to identify the parents of someone with such a common name (especially when the surname is very common as well). After all, because the name is so common, you will find that there are more married couples that can be the potential parents of a person. At least with a name like Judith or Thecla it is much easier to identify a person's parents.
For the men, Joannes (later Johannes became a more common spelling) was most common and the name often gives the same problems as Anna, Maria and Joanna for the women. But at least masculine names are more stable, as their names tend to be written down correctly more often. Maybe that's because people back then thought that women weren't worth the effort (you especially see that in the church books, where the surname of the mother is often omitted in the baptism records).
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Even modern birth certificates can be wrong. My sister Rebecca never had occasion to get a copy of her birth certificate until she was an adult. When it arrived, we were all very surprised to see that her name was spelled "Rebbecca." It must have been a clerical error.
This message was edited 3/21/2008, 1:57 PM
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I see this all the time when I look through the British censuses (on Ancestry.co.uk). There are so many difficulties. Illegible handwriting, poor spelling by the transcriber and the fact that people weren't required to give their full legal name.
I have one ancestor who is down as "Annie", "Anna M", "Mary Anna" and "Marianne" on consecutive censuses.
Baptism records are even worse for mistakes in my experience.
I have one ancestor who is down as "Annie", "Anna M", "Mary Anna" and "Marianne" on consecutive censuses.
Baptism records are even worse for mistakes in my experience.
This message was edited 3/21/2008, 1:33 PM
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Mary Ann
aargh, I can completely sympathise with the Mary Ann dilemma, I have two ancestors by this name and they appear variously as Maryann, Maryanne, Marianne, Mary Ann, Mary Anne or Mary A.
I also have a Lilias, who appears as Lilias, Lillias, Lilly and Lily.
I'm also currently trying to work out whether a women called simply 'Arabe' was Arabel, Arabella or something else entirely.
aargh, I can completely sympathise with the Mary Ann dilemma, I have two ancestors by this name and they appear variously as Maryann, Maryanne, Marianne, Mary Ann, Mary Anne or Mary A.
I also have a Lilias, who appears as Lilias, Lillias, Lilly and Lily.
I'm also currently trying to work out whether a women called simply 'Arabe' was Arabel, Arabella or something else entirely.
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Toussaint - what an interesting name!
I think the authors of the Bad Baby Names book where just looking for names they found ridiculous and probably did not pay much attention to a particular census takers capital G.
Some people just like to have a good laugh. You find the same attitude when it comes to names from other cultures. People find a name somewhere in the net and start making fun about. They do not realize that it is a normal name in another culture and that they person they met online never does have any problems with her or his name in real life.
I think the authors of the Bad Baby Names book where just looking for names they found ridiculous and probably did not pay much attention to a particular census takers capital G.
Some people just like to have a good laugh. You find the same attitude when it comes to names from other cultures. People find a name somewhere in the net and start making fun about. They do not realize that it is a normal name in another culture and that they person they met online never does have any problems with her or his name in real life.
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