Surname Origins and Spelling Variations: Why Your Ancestor's Name Kept Changing

Where surnames come from, why the same family appears under different spellings in the records, and how to search and record surname variants in your tree.

A surname feels permanent. In the records it is anything but. The same family can appear as Schmidt, Schmitt and Smith across three countries, or as Kowalski, Kowalsky and Kowalskie within one parish. Understanding why saves you from missing half of your ancestors.

Where surnames came from

Most European surnames became hereditary between the 12th and the 18th century, later in Eastern Europe and among peasants than among nobles and townspeople. They come from a few sources:

• Occupation: Smith, Schmidt, Kowalski (from kowal, blacksmith), Müller, Ferrari.
• Place: Wolski (from Wola), Berliner, Hill, da Vinci.
• Father's name (patronymic): Johnson, Petersen, Iwanowicz, Ivanov, Fernández.
• Nickname or trait: Brown, Klein, Biały (white), Kurz (short).
• Landlord or estate: in some regions serfs took the name of the estate.

In Scandinavia, patronymics changed with every generation until the late 19th century: Lars Andersen's son was Anders Larsen. In Russia and Poland, women's surnames took feminine endings (Kowalska, Ivanova), and in old Polish records a daughter could be Kowalszczanka and a wife Kowalszczyna.

Why spellings changed

• Nobody asked the family. Priests, clerks and census takers wrote what they heard, in the spelling rules of their own language.
• Language of the record. A Polish name in a Russian, German or Latin register was transliterated, and back again when the empire changed.
• Emigration. At the port and in the new country the name was written by officials who did not speak the language. The story that names were changed at Ellis Island is a myth; they changed later, in schools, workplaces and naturalisation courts, often at the family's own request.
• Illiteracy. A family that could not read had no spelling to defend.
• Fashion. Adding a noble-sounding -ski, dropping a diacritic, or anglicising outright.

How to search

• Use wildcards: Kowalsk\* finds -ski, -sky, -skie, -ska.
• Search phonetically: Soundex and similar tools group names that sound alike.
• Search by given name, year and place without the surname when nothing else works.
• Read the whole page of a register rather than relying on an index; indexers make the same mistakes as clerks.

How to record variants

Record the name as written in each record on the event, and choose one standard form for the person's main name. Most programs allow alternative names (NAME records with a type such as also known as) which are searchable and appear in book indexes. A useful convention is to standardise to the spelling the family used at the end of their life, and to list every variant in a note.

Showing variants on charts and in books

On a chart there is room for one name, so the standard form is used, with a maiden name in brackets for married women. In a family history book, the index should list every variant with a see reference (Kowalsky, see Kowalski), and the surname chapter should explain the changes. Readers with a differently spelled version of the name will find themselves, and that is the point.