Swedish female Surnames before circa 1870
This is question and a request, with background and explanation.
There is NO such thing as a womens surname ending with -dr. in the Swedish language. Nobody is called "Miss Carlsdr." - it is "Miss Carlsdotter".
The "dr" stands for and is short for "daughter". In Swedish that is written "dotter".
In my example above - Miss Carlsdotter - you should read and understand as following: the girl is the daughter of a man called Carl, in other words; Carls dotter, Carlsdotter. Simple as that. This is called "Patronymicon", we did not inherit the surnames unless they were really special, instead the sons and the daugthers got their fathers name with a twist - the daugther/son OF that man.
Yes, the sons has exactly the same patronymicon - Andersson simply means Anders son, son of Anders, Johansson means Johans son, the son of Johan. And therefore Johansdotter means the daughter of Johan, Johans dotter. Not -dr., that is not even possible to pronuonce.🤣
So, why do we see it all the time in the sources? Because they are written, not spoken and not meant to be read by us. They are nothing but the governments notes.
Please, please, stop calling Swedish women with the shortened surnames found in the sources - it is not okey in any way, it is deminishing towards the individual and it is also absolutely wrong. It is ALWAYS -dotter unless nothing else is said. This ends around and between 1870-1900, after that, everybody is a "son", funny but true.
I keep correcting everyone that I find - but I see new ones coming and it needs to stop.
HOW can we, the community or FamilySearch, make this a common knowledge at FamilySearch - so that we can honour even the women that came before us!
Answers
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I think we can only sympathise rather than solve. The issue needs to be addressed to those instructing the volunteers who spend hours and hours indexing the sources.
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It is not the fault of the indexers. The indexers transcribe what they see. If the record has -dr then the index should have -dr.
Dare I suggest that the majority of contributors to the FSFT don't know the proper usage? Most don't understand the history of a place before they try to do their family history.
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Like the sources, the Family Tree is also a written medium, not a spoken one. Regardless of abbreviations versus written-out words, nobody is calling anyone anything here.
The issue of patronymics versus inherited surnames is a problem on all genealogy platforms, because people make assumptions, and sometimes, that bleeds through to the software making assumptions, too. Luckily, this is a lot less of a problem on FamilySearch's Family Tree than it is on other tree websites. Unlike, say, Geni/MyHeritage, the FS tree makes no assumptions at all: the name fields are all blank when you enter a new profile, and nothing complains when a child's surname doesn't match a parent's.
The distinctions and customs of name usage actually affect indexes more than the tree: we keep coming up against collections where someone somewhere in post-processing made unfortunate decisions based on subconscious assumptions, resulting in thousands of people getting the wrong name. Aggravating as these errors are, what we need to keep in mind as an overarching principle is that indexes are not the data. They're merely finding aids for the data.
Indexes are also machine-parseable, unlike the documents/images themselves. This means that the index-centric setup of the Tree (and of the entire FS website, when you come down to it) is not going to change in the foreseeable future. One of the consequences of this structure is that profiles created based on index entries are likely to preserve what's in the index entries, verbatim — abbreviations, misreadings, typos, and all. This is simply a fact of life. We can complain about it, and educate each other about it, and fix the errors if we have the time and energy, but in the end, we just have to live with it. If it helps, try to keep in mind that it's not deliberate offense; people are just using the tools as best they know how. (Finding offense where none was intended is possibly a worse offense.)
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If you are going to deal with history, then you have to learn history. Long ago everything submitted to FamilySearch was submitted on paper forms with either handwritten or typewritten entries. Sometimes the lines for entering information were kind of short. This required a lot of abbreviations and there were various standards that were required. One was to shorten -dotter to -dt. or dtr. Others dealt with place names and resulted in things like Hordaland, Norway, being entered as Hrdl, Nrwy. You will still run across some of these old standards in some of the old entries in Family Tree that were imported from previous databases.
Not quite as long ago, the standards were updated to deal with early computer systems and the limitations of simplistic sorting routines. As I've come across older entries in FamilyTree and have worked in the past the the old paper family group sheets, it is pretty evident that there was once a required standard that all Scandinavian names ending in -sen, -son, -søn, -ssen, -sson, -ssøn, -datter, or -dotter be entered as -sen to that they could be sorted alphabetically correctly.
But to step way back in history, just look at any random Norwegian parish register like this page of death records from 1841: https://www.digitalarkivet.no/kb20070222690421 These are not government "notes." These are the full, official clerical records. There is not a -datter in sight, only -dr. I'm sure the priest meant no disrespect. That is just how things were recorded. And as mentioned above, indexes are supposed to be exactly what is in the record and not go around making things up or making possibly incorrect assumptions.
Just be clear, I am all in favor of doing away with all abbreviations. It's just a good practice that avoids confusion in a worldwide database. I do edit peoples names as I am working in Family Tree to completely spell out their names when possible. But it is not always possible. It can be very hard when every original Norwegian source for a person has her name as -dt. to know whether she actually used the Danish -datter or the true Norwegian -dotter.
As far as how to get the practice of abbreviations to stop, I'm sure with time they will just kind of die out since FamilySearch discourages all other abbreviations such as Jun., Dec., NY, and Calif.
As a last point, I do have to mention that there are plenty of records where the men's names were also abbreviated. You can find Ole Ols. all over the place. Likewise nobody would have ever said this aloud as "Ols" but would have said the full name. Here, too, no disrespect was ever intended. It was just a writing shortcut.
Just to correct one point, there is nothing funny about the end of the patronymics which used -sen/-son and -datter/-dotter. This was a change from true patronymics to a type of surname called fixed patronymics. Fixed patronymics follow the same pattern as any other fixed surname or family name in that a child has the same last name as his or her father. In the same way that all the children of John Smith have the surname of Smith, when patronymics were phased out, all the children of Jon Hansson would take the fixed patronymic surname of Hansson rather than the true patronymic last name of Jonsson or Jonsdotter.
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English is not my language, I am Swedish.
When I talk about this matter - I talk about us, the users, we who use this outstanding service of Familysearch. Not the volunteers, not the indexers, not the sources - I talk about the users. Us.
We, the amateur genealogists need to learn 'how to' read the information inside the sources and transfer that to the Family Tree. In that tree every branch is a family member - not a government note. That is the respect I talk about.
Another example, when a user search for a great grandmother named Anna Larsdotter - then the tree with the already made individual Anna Larsdr will not show up and we will make a new person even though she already has a id number, a copy.
And, yes, Gordon, the church in Sweden was a part of the government and doing government work, it was their assignment. That is one of the bigger reasons that Swedes emigrated from Sweden. Today, since about 1990, those assignments are transferred to the Skattemyndigheten because the Swedish church was separated from the state.
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With the possible use of abbreviations for patronymic names being used in Nordic records how can it be determined for certain if it is in fact an abbreviation or if it was their actual name? One example is - Ericsson or Ersson or Ericsdotter or Ersdotter? It seems that all four are viable surnames by themselves. One example is Samual Ersson, a current day Swedish hockey player. Were his ancestors always Ersson or possibly Ericsson or Ericksson?
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I'm 1/8th Swedish and my wife is 1/16th Swedish (and 15/16ths Norwegian) so we've worked in the the Swedish and Norwegian records a lot. I do agree completely that in Family Tree names should be spelled out completely and as we current users update the older profiles in Family Tree, some of which are from submissions over 100 years ago, the abbreviated forms will gradually vanish and new users, by seeing our example, will see the correct way to enter these name in Family Tree.
Fortunately, the search engine for Family Tree is very good at doing fuzzy searches and quite good at picking up variants such as Larsdatter, Larsdotter, Larsdtr, and Larsdt. And the possible duplicates routine is even better so that as soon as someone accidentally creates a new entry for someone already in the database, the other version pops up very quickly. Also, if you are doing a search, don't forget that this is a situation where wildcard searches are very helpful. Instead of searching for "Anna Larsdotter," search for "An* Larsd*" and you'll not only pick up every variety of possible ending for the last name, but also pick up all the Ana, Anna, Ane, and Anne variants the first name could have been entered as.
Just keep correcting all the names for your family as you run across them in Family Tree and when you have the opportunity, gently and politely remind other users to not use abbreviations and habits will gradually change.
Lycka till med undervisningsprocessen!
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Another example, when a user search for a great grandmother named Anna Larsdotter - then the tree with the already made individual Anna Larsdr will not show up and we will make a new person even though she already has a id number, a copy.
As you say, we users must learn to use the tools provided. The options for searching using wildcards are excellent and invaluable. Using those, we should find Anna Larsd* no matter how the ending is written.
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@AlexS41 You bring up another topic which is spelling. Something which a very modern invention. In the older records, spelling was very fluid and you might find someone's name spelled differently in every record. Many people were illiterate and never personally signed their names so what you see in the record is whatever the priest felt like writing that day.
In the context of this discussion, all of the names you gave in your example are just fine because they are spelled out fully and are not Erics. or Ers. or Ericsd. or Ersd. Those abbreviations are the complaint here.
Also, do keep in mind that very possibly none of Samual Ersson ancestors had that last name. All the name tells you is that he had an ancestor whose first name was some spelling variant of Erik.
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