How to spell
I am running into an issue. Everywhere I look for Jacob Rosenhoover there are various ways to spell his name. What is the most common way to spell his name?
Answers
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Hello @BrandonRosenhoover
Where are you searching for this surname? Germany, the United States, or somewhere else?
Please share some of the variant spellings you have found for the surname "Rosenhoover" in your research.
Here is an example of how I handled the surname "Wiesmayer" in my own research, which had at least six variant spellings:
"Variants of Sebastian Wiesmayer's surname as found in the parish records associated with him and his immediate family include Wießmayer, Wihsmeier, Wißmaier, Wißmayer, Wissmayr, and Wißmeier."
This was a note in my genealogical report. I settled on the most common spelling "Wiesmayer" (at least as I found it in my research) and recorded the variant spellings in the note.
So if you are finding in your research that "Rosenhoover" is the most prevalent form of this surname, you could use this as your "standard" and record other spellings as variants.
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Standardized spelling is a very modern concept. Spelling could vary from region to region or even between brothers in the same family, living on the same street or farm.
In our genealogical research, we will find many different spellings for the same family, especially at a time when the subject may not have been literate. The name would have been spelled as the priest, clerk, or enumerator thought it sounded.
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Jacob Rosenhoover was born ABT 1812 in Bavaria, Germany. One of the spellings is Jakob Rosenhuber, however, when I would search for him using this spelling nothing comes up. Also, I am showing: Rosenhoffer, Rosinhauer, Rosinhauver, and Rosenhauer, Rosenhow, Rosenhawer, Rosin., Rosenhauser, Rosinhoover, Rozinhower, and Rozinhoover., Rosenhoover is the most use common spelling in the United States.
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@BrandonRosenhoover Because of spelling variants, most genealogy websites offer the possibility of using wildcards, to include a variety of possible spellings of the names we are researching. Generally, a ? stands for 1 letter and a * takes the place of multiple letters.
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So you have a number of variants which begin as follows:
Rosenho
Rosenha
Rosinha
Rosinho
Rozinho
and almost all of them end in "er".
So you could do a wildcard search as @Áine Ní Donnghaile suggested using the wildcard * as follows:
Jacob Rosenho*er
Jacob Rosenha*er
Jacob Rosinha*er
Jacob Rosinho*er
Jacob Rozinho*er
You would need to search each of these names separately.
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This blog post article has some guidelines for searching with wildcards on FamilySearch.
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