When you are researching family history, you often find that names have changed over the years. It can make the search for your family’s history challenging.

There are a number of reasons a name might change – immigration, transcription errors, translation, marriage, a desire to fit in the local community or a desire to hide from something in the past.

In our family history, we have a few names that have changed over time – most notably Hoel. Several of Walt’s ancestors spelled it Hole. It seems to have changed back and forth a couple of times, and it also depends on which document you are looking at for a few family members.  Walt’s great-grandfather was listed as John Swisher Hole. His son, Walt’s grandfather, was William Henry Hoel. 

The information on this photo is copied from the back, and spells Hole as Hoel.

Another one that we have found is Finkbone/Finkbohn.  John S. Hole’s wife was Lydia Margaret Finkbohn, according to some records, and Finkbone in other records. Her father was listed as Finkbone in every record I have found for him (which is not many).

Immigration

There is a lot of family lore about names being changed at Ellis Island, but in fact that rarely happened. Most of the information about people who arrived at Ellis Island, and other ports in the United States, comes from ship’s passenger lists.

The people who were working for the immigration service were using the information on those lists and often corrected errors that occurred when the prospective immigrants were purchasing their passage for the trip.  Most inspectors at Ellis Island spoke 3 or more languages, and about a third were immigrants themselves.

When people came to America, the port of departure was not necessarily their home area or country. Sometimes, they embarked on a ship at one port, traveled to another port, then went on a different ship. Each of these stops provided another place where an error might occur. Booking clerks would write out the name as best as they could, and that was what went on the manifest.

Census Records and Transcription Errors

There are a lot of possibilities as to why a name might be different. In the examples above, the names are homophones. They sound the same but are spelled differently.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of homophones for Wellman – another family name: Wellmen, Wellmon, Wellmun, Walemen, Waleman, Whaleman, Whalemen, Wallman, Walmen, Welman, Willelm, Wiellman, Willman, Wellmand, Hwellman, and so forth.  You might even find Bellman in a census record. You have to look at all parts of the records to figure out if a person might be your relative.

When you are searching records, especially census files, you might see many variations.  Census takers relied on a variety of sources to gather their information.  Sometimes, they couldn’t find a family at home and asked the neighbors about the family next door. Information might come from a child, or from a new immigrant. Often, they spelled names phonetically based on what they were hearing.

Also, depending on who the census taker got their information from, first names and ages may vary.

Transcriptions

Here is a transcription of two census records for Walt’s great, great-grandfather, James Hole, and his family.

1850 census Darke County, OH – York township

  • Name                     Age          Sex                   Occupation             Place of birth
  • James A.N. Hole      41            M                      Farmer                    Ohio
  • Mary Ann Hole         37            F
  • Henry Hole               16            M
  • Joseph Hole              14            M
  • Sarah Hole                 12            F
  • John Hole                  8              M
  • Wm. I. Hole               5              M
  • Rhoda Hole                3              F
  • Charles Hole              8/12         M

Walt’s great grandfather is listed as 8, and the information we have is that he was born on November 4, 1840. People at that time didn’t celebrate birthdays the way we do today. You can see that Charles, their youngest child, was 8 month old when the census was taken.

1860 census Mercer County OH – Jefferson Township

  • Name                         Age          Sex          Place of birth          Occupation
  • Hole
  • James                           50            m             Oh                           Farmer
  • Mary                              47            f               Oh
  • John                              19            m             Oh
  • Wilson                          15            m             Oh
  • Rhoda                           13            f               Oh
  • Mary Ann                     9              f               Oh
  • James                            5              m             Oh

You can see in these census records some discrepancies in the names – Wm I. Hole from the 1850 census is listed as Wilson in the 1860 record.  The information I found later has his name as William Jasper. Charles is missing from this census, so likely he has died by this time. We don’t know the exact date, but we did hear that he died young.

In addition, the files you are searching when you go looking for census records are not the actual census, but a transcription of the records into an index, introducing a second point for error. If the handwriting is difficult to read or the pages have been damaged in some way, the person doing the transcription has to make a best estimate of what the records say.  

Finally, in the very early census, the person taking the census had to create their own form.  This picture shows two examples from the 1810 census.  It wasn’t standardized until 1830.

From the US census Bureau website

Digging Deeper

More interesting information about Ellis Island and the rules and regulations for immigrants.

A blog about Ellis Island, covering the story of Frank Woodhull.

A blog about census records.

More fun reading about census records.

From the US Census Bureau website, here is more about the early census.