How Do You Find Out If Your Last Name was Spelt Different Than It is Now

By armymama09 June 25, 2010 913 views 2 comments

Comments (2)

Jennifer652

Just type it into a search engine, and see if anything comes up that way. If nothing does, then make up some name variations by brainstorming. Then use the original and its variations in a search to come up with more.

Pretend your surname is Shakespeare. By playing around with it, you might get Shaxpeare, Shaxpeer, Shakspear. There are 84 ways to spell it. All you do is change a few letters.

allycat

Goto RootsWeb, in right hand column, click on 'Soundex Converter', type in your surname, and click on 'Get Soundex Code' and you will see other surnames sharing the same code. "...The Soundex system is a method of indexing names in the 1880, 1900, 1910, and 1920 US Census. Soundex can also aid genealogists by identifying spelling variations for a given surname. ..."