Created by Julie Goucher, 2023

One of the challenges genealogists encounter is the spelling of names, surnames and places. The challenge rather depends on several things.

People write what they think they hear, which is impacted by unfamiliarity of accents, dialects and other languages

Russian alphabet blocks – personal collection of Julie Goucher – 2020

Challenging the misspelling of a word is only has possible if you can read what was written in the first place.

In countries where there is a Roman Catholic influence, it is common to see males with the middle name of Maria. 

Alphabets are not all the same, not all countries have the same number of letters, some use accented characters and others might use Diacritic marks.

Armenian Alphabet

In some instances, the alphabet has changed over time, as a country has developed and formed it’s own identity. In some instances the alphabet is not in written format at all.

Signed alphabet