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From: Kaye Cole <>
Subject: Re: [HWE] Re: HUGUENOTS-WALLOONS-EUROPE-D Digest V00 #75
Date: Sun, 02 Apr 2000 14:13:28 -0700


Kaye Cole wrote,

Some thoughts about name changes. It seems to me they are far more likely to
occur as the result of foreign pronounciation, misspelling or mistranscription
rather than than through translation of meanings. Most people have quite a
feeling of attachment to their names and I imagine would tend to hang on to the
original sound, which can in later generations become corrupted. A simple and
obvious example of foreign pronounciation leading to
misspelling/mistranscription would be french "Denis" becoming Denee or Denny. A
good English/English example of presumably dialect pronounciation, was the name
"Froggett" being transmuted into "Firget".

Another source of name change could be officials misreading what is written, in
transcribing from an original document to an index for example. Looking vainly
for my aunt whose maiden name was Louey it became clear that Lovey also needed
to be investigated. I still didn't find her, (in the indexes that is) but the
point stands.

Find out how a name is pronounced in French, then imagine the potential aural
corruptions, then work out how might these have been spelt. The other leg
would be to imagine how the spelling could be corrupted by mistranscription
from one record to another, (which letters look like other letters).

Lesson 8 of the Rootsweb Tutorials is quite good on this topic, although rather
US oriented

Regards, Kaye Cole in Melbourne


George Ames wrote:

> Does anyone know where to check on translations of the original Frenc

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