Special Characters in Name?
I'm not sure how to proceed with a name containing special characters.
He signs as "Johan Peter Heÿgiß"
I'd like to make this his primary name, but I'm not sure if that is okay or if it should be Heygiss with alternate names (it has a lot of variations once they're in the US).
Best Answer
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I switched to Beta to illustrate. Entering his name as Johan signs it causes no error message.
If, however, I try to add one of the characters not allowed, the red error message appears.
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Answers
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Yes, you can use Heÿgiß as his primary name. Won't cause any trouble at all.
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Thank you both so much!
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They're not even all that special, as characters go. :-)
Luckily, FamilySearch learned Unicode a long time ago, so there is absolutely no reason to stick to the characters available on an old-fashioned English typewriter. Heck, you can use alphabets other than the Latin one (such as Greek or Cyrillic), or even writing systems that aren't alphabets (such as Chinese).
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From the "more than you ever wanted to know" department:
Both y-umlaut (ÿ) and ess-zet (ß) are in the Latin-1 supplement of Unicode (meaning the very first extension to basic ASCII), and both have alt-number shortcuts in the English keyboard layouts in Windows (0255 and 0223, respectively). (They're similarly easy to access in the fruity systems, but I don't know the details for those.) This is in contrast to the characters in the Latin-Extended-A and -B sets, which involve character maps or switching keyboard layouts in order to type them. (The ones that I deal with regularly are the "long umlaut" characters in Hungarian: ŐőŰű, which are different from ÖöÜü. For example, öröm is "joy", őröm is "my guard".) German doesn't use anything beyond Latin-1, luckily.
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Please beware that y-umlaut (ÿ) is not used in German (and Dutch). It's a misinterpretation of the handwritten 'ij', which connects the 'i' and the 'j' together.
So in this case It's more likely the last name is spelled as 'Heijgiß'.
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@Lars van Ravenzwaaij Thank you, that is very interesting (I'm completely new to German).
This seems odd to me, as the BYU Script tutorial that I am using for comparison also shows that there is no y-umlaut in German, yet on the page of the animated lowercase "y" it says, "With an umlaut, the y (ÿ) is pronounced like the diphthong ei or ai." (This is the link, click on the lowercase "y" to see the caption that goes with the animation: )
Is it possible that the y-umlaut was in use during earlier times? This signature was written in 1751. What does it look like to you? (opinions from other readers are most welcome; I am very interested to understand this better)
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Please note that I have absolutely no useful opinion on the existence or otherwise of y-umlaut. However, I would suggest that if you wanted to convince yourself whether that bit before the "g" is a "y" or an "ij" pair, then maybe finding a "y" in that same page or nearby, might help. How does it compare? How many downstrokes are there before the vertical that forms the bit below the line?
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@vjdavis This is typical and perfect example of the handwritten 'ij'.
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@vjdavis See this discussion
I posted there a example of a modern Dutch writing exercise. Between x and z there is the 'ij' in handwriting. This is not a 'ÿ'.
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@vjdavis I searched a little further. In the past, two dots or dashes were often written over the letter y in German when it had its origin in 'ij' in German words, in order to distinguish it from the Greek 'y'. This is the case here.
In Early New High German, wich is the period between 1350 and 1650, in a few seldom cases the ligature 'ÿ' was used in handwriting (never in print though) and was meant as 'ii'. It was pronounced als a longer 'i'.
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Unicode's nomenclature bypasses the whole letter-versus-ligature question and calls the character "y with diaeresis" (and "sharp s" for ß).
On the FS Wiki's "Germany Handwriting" page (https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Germany_Handwriting), there's a link to a PDF of "German given names handwriting examples" (https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/img_auth.php/9/93/German_given_names_handwriting_examples.pdf). Of the names that it transcribes with a "y" (Aloysius, Cyriakus, Dionysius, Egyd, Hieronymus, Polykarpus, Aloysia, Betty, Fanny), all but Betty look like they have dots or some sort of mark above the "y". Many of those names are of Greek origin, i.e., the letter in them is an actual "y", not a ligature, and yet they are still marked; it appears that in practice, Germans dotted y the same way we dot i and j.
I'm wondering if maybe the theoretical idea was to dot it if it was a vowel rather than a consonant? The BYU tutorial (https://script.byu.edu/german-handwriting/alphabet/gothic-handwriting/animated-lowercase) has two examples under "y": Tÿlle and mayer, and the difference between those is vowel versus consonant.
In the hands demonstrated in the BYU tutorial and shown in the given name examples, the "y" is much curvier than "ij" would be, and the same is true of vjdavis's example: there's an "i" two letters later, and there's nothing like it in the humps of the "y". I would therefore transcribe that name with a "ÿ", not with "ij".
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@Julia Szent-Györgyi With all due respect, you're wrong if you would transcribe this as 'ÿ'. As I'm living in Germany I've acces to genealogy literature in German language. I'm also very experiencend in reading ancient German documents. In this case this are clearly a 'i' and a 'j' which are connected in the same style of writing as the other letters are. The handwriting is consistents with the style used at the time of history.
There are only a very few and very well documented names with use this ligature: von Meÿenn, Zeÿn, Boÿens, von Croÿ, Ferrarÿ, Deboÿ, de Bÿl, Lohmeÿer, Meÿer and Weÿer.
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Well, this is tough! Obviously I am perfectly ignorant of German script but, try as I may, the signature looks to me like the BYU tutorial "y" with all of the jags and curves that are not present in the "i" or "j" even if they were linked (whereas the Dutch "ij" in Lars' example looks clearly like "i" and "j" linked together).
I have run some searches and the name does appear in both Dutch and German records with the "ij" spelling, just as Lars said. I would never have thought to search on that spelling in a million years! Thank you Lars!!
I will work on Johan Peter's family some more tomorrow when I'm fresher. This family is so important to me, and I truly appreciate everyone's input and help. I don't even know if we're related, but I found their records 'by accident' and am working to get them setup properly in FamilyTree (I've already made some rookie mistakes, I'm sure, but that should be easy enough to fix). I feel certain that this family will have a significant impact on the research of our ancestor, Andrew Heiges. Haha.. come to think of it, they already have, thanks to this thread. :-)
Thank you again! I cannot adequately express how grateful I am.
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@vjdavis You're very welcome! This is a difficulty with (mostly) American researchers, so you're not alone.
Herr is some more Information, where this letter with dots has another function as a diaresis:
- i and j separately
- ij ligature
- y with diaeresis (trema)
- y
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Thank you, @Lars van Ravenzwaaij
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I am sitting in the FSC right now, looking at his burial record, and it is clearly ij! I would have misread this as the umlaut-y, if not for your helpful advice @Lars van Ravenzwaaij
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