The Name’s the Same - but the Spellings are Haywire

Written as part of Amy Johnson Crow’s “52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks” challenge. This week’s topic: The Name’s the Same.

A common problem for family historians, and my response to this week’s theme, is our family names have been spelt in many different ways in the past.

I had problems with my patriarchal name - Macnee - when I was a school child.  It often acquired a K, as in MacKnee, or an ‘r’ and turned into Macree.  But when I came to search for it in genealogical records, I realized the problem was much worse.   First was the discovery that “McNie” was the predominant spelling until well into nineteenth century, when it switches back and forth for years before finally settling on the double “e” ending.  

As I tracked the records I found and had to check at least eight different spellings in this family: Mac- or Mc -Nee, -Nie, -Knee or -Knie.  And found more – M’Nee etc, occasionally a McNey or McNey.  Then there are transcription errors.  Who’d have thought that Scottish transcribers would omit the “Mac” prefix, and enter “Nie” for my great grandfather, when the writing was perfectly clear and in a beautiful script in the original document.  This was in a crucial record which turned out to be the only one with a clear statement of his birthplace.  

On the maternal side there was another problem.  My mother’s mother was a Gilvray.  Not that difficult, I’d have thought.  But not so.   I tried various spellings of ‘Gilvray’ and tried ‘Gilbert’ and experimented with various wild cards.  In the end I discovered that the transcribers had seen the ‘v’ as an ‘o’ and recorded it as Giloran in in 1851 and Giloray in the censuses of 1861, 1871, 1881, 1891 and 1901.  

‘Lilly’ was another one.  Or is that ‘Lilley’, or maybe ‘Lily’?  ‘Beat’, ‘Beats’, and ‘Beattie too.  ‘Kent’, ‘Joy’ and ‘Hamilton’ all appear as both first names and last names, which ccould be confusing.  Thank goodness for Ward, Bell, Carr and Brown – those names were consistently the same.