Surname Variations.

My wife, Carol, received an email from one of her many contacts, the other day. This email came as quite a revelation! We had known for some time that in the past, many people couldn't write and it was often left to the village scholar or the local vicar to record events.

We also knew that when writing names, they were often written as they sounded to the writer. This of course led to the many variations of surnames that are in use now.

My own name 'Ackroyd' for example has many variations, and we have actually found different spellings on a family gravestone.

So getting back to the email. Carol had been researching my maternal great grandmothers name 'Holling'. In doing so she checked the usual variations, such as, Hollin; Hollings; Hilling and many more. Then she read an email that told her that new variations including: Hollingworth; Hollingsworth; Hollinsworth and several similar names should be checked.

Prior to this, Carol had hit a brick wall with her research on 'Holling'. But adding these new variations to her research literally had the wall demolished within days! She found many references to these new variations and low and behold... she found several links to our own 'Holling'.

So, don't despair if you hit your own brick wall, just use the old grey matter to think of a few variations for names that you are researching.

You should find many books about 'Surnames'. Use our links to 'Amazon.co.uk' or if you are researching 'Yorkshire Surnames', Then you could try the excellent books by Dr. George Redmonds, you'll find them at the bottom of the 'Research Prices/Information.' page.

Addendum: Carol has just found out that we have another 'John Smith' on a direct line - The mind boggles!! She's currently sifting through hundreds of them in the Penistone area.

***

You are free to use the above article on your site or in your newsletter, providing you print the following resource box along with it. Thank you.

Resource Box: [This article is the copyright © of Mr J Ackroyd 2004 or of another author who has given their permission for their article to be published on  - http://familyhistory4all.co.uk.  Please visit this site for more articles and information relating to 'Tracing your Family Tree'.]

Back to Articles