Names

My family tree work is centered around the ancestry.com web site. I joined May 30, 2010. What an amazing tool it is! using the web site gives me access to an unbelievable amount of information. When viewing the 1860 census for Lincoln County, Tennessee I can actually see the original page in the census taker's book. This is very helpful, because often the transcribing of the information from the hand written page to a computer database turns out to be the source of many errors.

I don't fault the transcribers. It is a lot of information, and you can only spend so much time on each entry. But, if a particular line on the page is of interest to you, you can zoom in on it and examine the census takers writing in detail.

My mother's father was a Bowen. In some census records the database transcriber thought it said Boren, but on close examination, I can see that the census taker actually did write Bowen.

In other cases, it is clear that the census taker wrote down what they thought they heard when they questioned the person. So, Bowen might actually have sounded like Boren and was written down as Boren. And of course, if there was a husband, wife, and ten children, they all get converted into Borens!

Names are very fluid. You can not assume anything concerning names. Take my own case. I was named after my father. So, I am Henrik Benjamin Wergeland Rasmussen II. (My father was from Norway) When I was growing up, everyone called me Ricky. But, when I got married, my wife Dee (aka Delia, Deiliah) said Ricky sounded like a little boy, and besides, my real name ended in Rik so she called me Rik, and insisted everyone else do the same, so for the last 40+ years, I have written my name as Rik Rasmussen.