r those spellings to create connections? the last name is Vasko, or Wasko, or Vaskuf.
Through political and other situations name spellings were changed to match who was in charge. Also through name extraction some spellings are slightly different. How do I account for this. As an example I have a Janos Vasko who's son came to America and was John Wasko. What do I do.
Answers
-
Variations in name spellings are extremely common particularly the further back you go when fewer people could read and write. I have experienced families with a number of children baptised in the same location over a period of years where the surname is spelt differently each time. My particular favourite was an ancestor named Euden but I subsequently found the name spelt Youden, Uden and Howden - four different initial letters. No doubt someone can beat my record!
My policy has been to record the name as it is spelt in the first document - a birth or baptism record. You can always add variations as alternate names or put notes in records to indicate names being spelt differently on different records.
Regards
Graham Buckell
0 -
If you are working in the FamilySearch tree, in the "Other Information" box, you can add the variant names, with an explanation. If you are using other websites or desktop genealogical software, there is usually a similar option.
1 -
Pardon me while I go off on an onomastic tangent....
Vaskó is vas "iron" plus a diminutive suffix -kó. Various derivatives of "iron" show up as people's names in 11th-13th century records (which is before inherited family names came into use in Hungary), so some uses of the surname may be patronymic in origin, meaning "son or descendant of a man named Vaskó". Another possible motivation for its use as a surname is from an occupation: many of the things a blacksmith made could be called vaska or vaskó "iron thingy", so a person who made these things could acquire the byname Vaskó.
The spelling Wasko uses the rules of German orthography (where v = /f/ and w = /v/). (Technically, a fully-German spelling would be Waschko, but people were seldom consistent when spelling names.) I have no idea where "Vaskuf" could've come from; perhaps someone simply misheard the name?
We now return you to our regular genealogical programming. :-)
2
