Julie Goucher ~ Anglers Rest

Whether you write articles, Tweets, Facebook posts or a blog you are writing and publicising your study and fulfilling at least three of the Seven Pillar’s of Wisdom: the Art of One-Name Studies, published by the Guild in 2012. The book is also available from Amazon in Kindle format.

In the last few years I have written more and more about my own studies, and in particular about my Orlando study, Italian research and about the broad genre of surnames and surname research.

Here are a few articles I have written in the last year alone (in reverse order):

• All the posts relating to Surnames and One-Name Studies on this site can be found HERE
• The Pharos Tutors – What is your Oldest Possession? ~ 10 February 2018
• Journal of the Guild of One-Name Studies – From a Single Name – Beginnings of an Italian One-Name Study ~ Vol 13, Issue 1, pp 30-32 ~ Jan-March 2018 (Awarded the Guild of Award of Excellence)
• Legacy Blog – Starting your Italian Research Journey ~ 26 October 2017
• Legacy Blog – Pathway to My Sicilian Heritage ~ 16 October 2017
• Family Tree Magazine (UK) – Setting up a One-Name Study ~ October 2017, pp 22 – 24
• Family Tree Magazine (UK) Blog – How to start a One-Name Study ~ April 2017
• Family Tree Magazine (UK) – My Genetic Journey (Case study as part of a DNA Exclusive guide) ~ February 2017, pp 48-49

You have nothing to loose by writing about your surnames. You may even find a connection to your family or someone else researching the surname. In some cases, including my Orlando study, our One-Name Studies and surname research is bound together with a One-Place Study and perhaps our cultural heritage.

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.