The Forestry Forum

General Forestry => General Board => Topic started by: isawlogs on December 06, 2015, 09:09:04 AM

Title: Names, how names change with time !
Post by: isawlogs on December 06, 2015, 09:09:04 AM
  I started to look into my paternale grand-fathers ancestry. Our surname now is Crites, he had four brothers, all of wich could not read or write. As it was at the time they where in the work force at a young age and all worked for different outfits, being bilingual in there speakings some worked for French outfits some worked for English. My grand-father worked for an English outfit and they wrote his name down as Crites, as it is today, ( his birth cetificat has it down as Cretes)  his brothers all had a difffferent spelling variation... CrĂȘte, Cretres CrĂȘtes and  Crytes also depending on a French or English outfit.  Makes it interesting when looking up uncles and family tree...  He is of German decsent, his Grand-father came over in the midle of 1800 and married a German descent wife in Corwall Ontario. His name was Kristifer Kreitz.
Title: Re: Names, how names change with time !
Post by: Ron Wenrich on December 06, 2015, 10:14:13 AM
Finding your ancestry can be a lot of fun.  My uncle told me to do it with caution as you will find out how many horse thieves there were in your family. 

My mother's maiden name was Demy.  Her great grandfather was married 3 times.  With each wife, he changed the spelling of the name.  One was Demey, one was Demmy, and the last one was Demy.

In the US and probably Canada, immigration registers had a lot to do with the spelling of names.  In my area, we are heavy German.  Pennsylvania Dutch is still spoken by many, which is an offshoot of German.  My grandmother's maiden name was Yingst.  Apparently, when they come off the boat in 1750s, the English didn't know that a "J" in German is pronounced as a "Y".  The original spelling was Jiengst, and was altered to Yingst.  My great uncle told me that Jiengst came from the Medieval word for jester.  Wenrich has been shortened from Weinrichter, which means wine judge.  I tell people I'm a descendant of a bunch of drunken fools, which explains a lot. 
Title: Re: Names, how names change with time !
Post by: sandhills on December 06, 2015, 10:46:31 AM
According to what my dad has found his (I think) great grandpa came across on the boat and was a Carlson, there was so many other Carlson names on the same boat he changed his to Young, so now that's what we are  :D.
Title: Re: Names, how names change with time !
Post by: sawguy21 on December 06, 2015, 01:47:16 PM
Many of the immigrants could not, read, write, or speak English when they arrived. The intake people could not understand their language so wrote down a close approximation, the people being illiterate did not realize the name was incorrect so it stuck. The search becomes challenging.
I have dug into my ancestry, it is fascinating. My maternal grandmother's maiden name was given to me as Laage, they were from Bayern district of Germany. I couldn't find anything then discovered it was spelled Lage, I found her family in central Idaho. Her parents came to Canada for a brief period then returned, probably couldn't handle Alberta winters ;D, but she married and stayed.
My grandfather of Norwegian descent came from South Dakota. His name was Erickson, there at least a half dozen common spellings depending where they came from.
Title: Re: Names, how names change with time !
Post by: Ljohnsaw on December 06, 2015, 04:09:26 PM
Quote from: sandhills on December 06, 2015, 10:46:31 AM
According to what my dad has found his (I think) great grandpa came across on the boat and was a Carlson, there was so many other Carlson names on the same boat he changed his to Young, so now that's what we are  :D.

A lot of people want to spell my last name with an I at the end.  I was told that when my great grandfather came over, there were two Ignaz Sawicki's on the boat - so he became Sawicky.