Julie Goucher ~ Anglers Rest

The topic of variants and deviants is addressed in detail during the Introduction to One-Name Studies course. Essentially we have likely all come across variants and deviants to our surnames, even if we have not called them that.

Variants

For the purposes of my own One-Name Studies I have registered two variants for ORLANDO, these are ORLANDE and ORLANDA. For my BUTCHER study I registered just one, BUTCHERS. It is also worth pointing out that you do not need to register a variant and at the initial point of registering the surname Butcher I did not register a variant. I did so when I came across a divorce record in the name of Butchers in which the male stated that his name was Butcher and not Butchers.

When looking at my husband’s ancestry his early Goucher ancestors were recorded as Goacher. The Goucher surname is listed as a variant in the Goacher One-Name Study by another member of the Guild of One-Name Studies.

Deviants

A deviant is a change of surname that happens inconsistently. In the case of the 1939 Register, my husband’s Grandmother, was recorded as GROUCHER.

Why do variants exist?

Accents, spelling and people writing what they think they hear rather than what they actually do – Goucher is a case in point and I regularly receive correspondence in the name of Goucher and Groucher. In a letter recently, I was referred to as Goucher and Goacher, within the same sentence and that is not all, the envelope was handwritten and addressed to Mrs Groucher!

In a time when not everyone could read and write it was very easy for the inconsistencies with the spelling to exist because the person writing the surname would not be corrected if the person could not read what was written down.

Those with “foreign” surnames might change their surname, to make themselves fit in more and I gave an example recently. Surnames that have spellings that are not familiar in one country might become changed over time, just to be easier to manage.

You might find this page on the Guild of One-Name Studies website useful as you consider your own surnames and their potential variants. Those of you who read this post from earlier in the year might find it useful to read it again and consider the potential variant I discovered. I will at some point write about this again and my hypothesis about this.

Understanding our surnames is a really important element of any One-Name study. In much the same way as building a house, with the foundations first, a One-Name study is built and developed the same way.

In today’s post I am going to focus on Italian surnames and why they perhaps give us some insight.

There is nothing more frustrating than looking for your Italian ancestor on Census or document and where it says place of birth it simply says Italy. By understanding the surname, it perhaps gives us further clues.

Italian surnames are mostly derived from:

• Patronymics, meaning they are essentially from the male of the household, and that might include any variation to the name – such as Giovanni
• Geographical, based upon the place – such as Bulgari, Lazio, Sutera,
• Nicknames – and not always complementary ones – Grassi (big or fat), Forte (strong), Gambacorta (short leg), Gentile (Gentle)
• Occupational – Medici (Physician), Pastore (shepherd), Barbieri (barber)

Some spellings might determine a specific region:

• Those ending in isi as in Troisi, could indicate the family is from Neapolitan or Sicilian.
• Surnames ending aloro such as Favaloro are Sicilian surnames.
• Surnames ending igo such as Barbarigo are Venetian
• Those ending with utti such as Zanut are from Fiuli Venezia Giulia (on the border with Slovenia and Austria)
• Those ending iu such as Mongiu are Sardinian

Old records may also influence some surnames as they are converted from Latin to Italian and sometimes in to dialect. Later changes may have occurred as the are converted into English or Americanised – Giuseppe Pastore converts to Joseph or Joe Shepherd.

Those children who were foundlings often have a surname of the town where they were found, and were often stigmatised because of that. Later the ruling changed so that the children were given the name of another town, which of course didn’t help with the stigma issue either, especially if that surname did not exist significantly in the town. In these cases a DNA test might help.

We look at a number of the points raised here and especially over the last few posts (S for Synthesis and T for thinking about surnames) in the Introduction to One-Name Studies course.

Over the next two days we are going to be thinking about surnames. In many ways, T & U are not only linked together, but also to S for Synthesis.

The main question is What does my surname mean? There are a number of key surnames and where they originate can determine what kind of surname they are. You can read an earlier post HERE.

I have two studies, one for the surname of Butcher which is an occupational name. The other is for the surname of Orlando which suggests it is a Patronymic surname with links to Roland and Rowland. I am not entirely happy with the conclusions that I have drawn about this surname, but over the coming weeks I will discuss it more here. Incidentally, both of my One-Name Studies sites are deep under construction, I have 25 years of paper to process!

My husband has a study for the surname of Worship which was the maiden name of his paternal grandmother, I have always felt that the surname was very much linked to either a post holder name, someone who was connected with the church in some way and, having searched the Clergy of the Church of England Database there are a number of Worship entries as you can see below and some of them are quite early.

• Worship, Benjamin (1764-1764)
• Worship, James (1577-1585)
• Worship, John (1591-1599)
• Worship, John Lucas (1817-1834)
• Worship, William Taylor (1822-1832)
• Worshipp, William (1618-1618)

By thinking about your surname you are building up a profile about the surname, it’s origins and focus. Those factors give a One-Name study a good grounding and are these are discussed in the Pharos introduction to One-Name Studies course and in the Guild publication, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, the Art of a One-Name Study, available from the Guild or Amazon.

I’ll be back to tomorrow talking about….see you tomorrow!

Those of you who have been reading this site for a while may well recognise the image I shared a few days ago of the Seven steps of a One-Name Study. The third step is Synthesis and today we are going to explore what that means.

Synthesis is essentially taking the results of analysis and going a stage further, by giving some substance to your data, drawing conclusions about your surname.

You can do this by

• Exploring the meaning of your surname.
• Looking at the geographical origin of your surname – you might look at surname distribution maps for this stage.
• How and where possible variants to your surname came from.
• Looking at patterns of distribution – considering patterns of emigration and immigration, what caused those patterns of migration and was the migration permanent.

All these are discussed in the Pharos introduction to One-Name Studies course and in the Guild publication, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, the Art of a One-Name Study, available from the Guild or Amazon.

Over the next two days we are going to be thinking and understanding surnames in more depth, so I do hope you will continue to read along and perhaps share any instances that you have come across and your thoughts.