It's All in a Name...

Are you proud of your heritage? Do you feel you need to live a life with honor because you are a…? You want your family name to mean something. It is special to you so you want it to be special to others like Ford, Edison, Einstein, and Mozart. What many people don’t know is that when they came to the United States their name was changed, whether it was because the custom agent couldn’t spell the name or your ancestor wanted to Americanize their name, but in some way or other your family name could have been changed.

So what does this mean to you as you research your family history? So far for my family, I have run across three names that have been changed and one of them was a first name. Finding information is rarely easy and when we have ancestors that immigrate to other countries it makes it more difficult. So just because a surname is spelled different than the one you are researching, don’t close the door. You just might find the missing ancestor you were looking for and he is under a different rock than you thought.

As people change their names today, it will be confusing for future generations to find their ancestors also. It used to be families normally stayed near one another so if you found two people with the same last name in a town they were normally related. But now with so many people in the world and families so far spread out it will be extremely difficult for future genealogist to find their history. At one point my parents, who have eight children, had 3 daughters and 2 sons living in other states.

So just remember when you are looking for that elusive ancestor, try to phonetically change the spelling and see if you find the person you are looking for. You just might get lucky and open up a whole new world.