Anglicization of German Names

American history is romanticized as a story of immigrants. Almost every American, including myself, can trace our lineage to multiple immigrants from Germany, but getting there is always a straight path. Anglicization of our German ancestors' names poses a large but surmountable obstacle to our genealogical research. Records and indexes are filled with our English speaking ancestors butchering the spelling of foreign names. German, French, Polish, all of them. 

Heinrich becomes Henry. 

Petros changes to Peter. 

Marie to Mary. 

Francesca to Frances. 

These are easy to follow examples of first names and are common translations.  

Tracing surnames can be a bit more complex. Lots of factors can affect the spelling of your ancestors’ names, especially the uncommon ones. Thick accents, illiteracy, lazy officials, different alphabets (Cyrilic, Hebrew, etc.), all lead to mistaken identities and missed clues on your genealogical journey. I’ve even seen ancestors have their name spelled multiple ways in the same document. 

The Origin of Swatzell

I was lucky enough that my great-grandmother had a Germanic surname that was relatively unique. Not Schmidt nor Müller. Finding a Johann Schmidt in Germany is as easy as finding a specific John Smith in England. 

Every location where I tracked the family they were the only ones in the region with that surname or variations. The only tricky part was separating aunts, uncles and cousins with the same first name. As I traced the family name back further and further to its origin I found over 24 variations of spellings. From Alabama to Tennessee, Virginia, Maryland, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, all the way back to Baden and Hesse, Germany.

Schwärtzel	Schwartzle	Swatsel	Sweitzel
Schwärtzle	Schwarzel	Swatsell	Swartzel
Schwartzel	Schwertzel	Swatzel	Shwertzel
Schwartsel	Schwerzler	Swatzell	Swatzil
Schwaerzel	Swartzell	Swertzel	Swatzill
Schwertzele	Swartsell	Swentzel	Swortzel

I plan to have a series of posts on the research of this family line in the near future.

When you’re performing your family searches it’s important to take these various alternative spellings into account or you may miss a critical record. It’s also important not to assume that all spellings are your ancestor’s as they may be an alternative spelling of another name. 

Here are some things to take into account when looking for alternative spellings.

Original and Secondary Records vs Indexes

Like most amateur genealogists I start my search with a simple name, date, and location in Ancestory.com or FamilySearch.org. Technology is good enough to provide soundex and fuzzy searches of your entry and provide a lot of alternative or similar spellings to your anglicized name. 

All of these results are from an index, or a digital transcription of what someone thought they read when they saw the original record. The accuracy of these indexes should be verified, where possible, by examining the original record. Sometimes the handwriting can be difficult to read and the index is a best guess. There are many examples where the first instance of a name can be illegible but other instances clearly show the correct spelling. Other times the same person or family can have multiple spellings in the same document. 

Government Records

Most government records like census, tax, and court records, will have an anglicized version of your ancestor’s name. When searching for your ancestors in these documents you will need to use their “Americanized” name. Here’s a list of common translations of letters/combinations:

German	Anglicization
Sch	sh
ä	a or ae
ö	o or oe
ü	u or ue
tz	ts
j	y
ß	ss or s
b	p
k	c
ei	ey
ie	i

US Church Records

I have found that early Lutheran or Reformed Church records are often closer to the original Germanic spelling of the name than government records. This is likely due to the church congregation being made up entirely of native German speakers. 

German Church Records

While likely the closest to an original spelling that you will find, there may still be some variations in the spelling. The most common variations I have noticed in German church records is Evangelische (Protestant) and Katholisch (Catholic) records. Many Catholic records will have latinized names and getting the correct German translation won’t be guaranteed. Even in Protestant records, I have seen a last name like Krob spelled as Kropp and Krop.

Your biggest challenge with these records won’t be spelling variations but reading the Kurrent or Sütterlin to begin with. For tips with reading old German handwriting I recommend Katherine Schober’s website: https://sktranslations.com/blog.

Illiteracy

Could your ancestors even write their own name? Depending on where and when they lived it may be highly likely that they were illiterate and depended on the clerk, lawyer, or census taker to spell their name, leading a wide range of possible spellings. 

In some censuses there is a column for highest school grade attained, and in others a column for “Can Read & Write”. These are your easiest identifiers of someone being illiterate.

Another common way to find out is how they sign their name. In many documents you will see “His/Her X Mark” listed where the signature should be. It sounds a bit like a cartoon or a low budget old TV show, but X was an actual form of signature. If you notice documents signed this way, expect lots of variations in the spelling of the name.

Don’t jump to conclusions, Matt

Once you find what you think may be a new variation of spelling an ancestor’s name, don’t assume you have the correct person. The new spelling may be the correct spelling of someone else or the misspelling of another name entirely. Hopefully, this new record points you towards a new fact, marriage, birth, location, that you didn’t have before. If this is the case, perform searches with this new information but use other clues to verify your information before committing it as fact to your family tree.

Here are some tips to verifying a record with an alternative spelling:

• Are their other family members on the record that match the known family? Validate their ages as well, if you can.
• Is there an address associated with the document that you can map to another known place of residence for your ancestor. Many times an address is on the document but not listed in the search index or it may be on a previous page (the case sometimes with a US census)
• Does the alternative spelling appear in a document where you already have identified your ancestor. Sometimes people are missed or move during a poll (i.e a census) but appear in another for the same year (like a tax record).