I have McBeans and McLeods in my family tree. Or is that MacBeans and MacLeods? When asked whether we are Mcs or Macs, a distant cousin who still carries the surname said that his parents registered one sibling as a Mc, and one as a Mac! Anyone with McMacs in their tree knows the frustration of searching alphabetical indexes for their ancestors. Did the index put Mcs and Macs together? Or should I search Mac first and then head on over to the Mcs? God bless the indexes that gave up altogether and just decided to use M’.

Aside from sharing these frustrations and humorous anecdotes, there’s a real purpose to discussing how a name was spelled. I honestly thought this was so basic that anyone who’s been doing genealogy knew this, but after chatting with someone who’s been doing genealogy research for awhile I discovered that this is not the case. I pointed out some records that I thought might be her ancestors and she told me that it couldn’t possibly be because her ancestors were proud of their heritage and didn’t spell their surname that way. I’m sure my ancestors were also proud and never spelled their name McCloude but that didn’t stop the census-taker from writing it that way! This doesn’t even begin to cover the errors made in transcription- just ask me how long it took to find a census record for Donald M Bean!

The moral of the story is that even if your ancestors could read and write, which up until a certain point in history many couldn’t, you’re going to see a lot of variation in how their name was spelled because they weren’t the ones filling in the forms. And while it may be easier to stick with a preferred spelling of the name when searching records, you may be missing out on records where the name is spelled differently. It reminds me of the joke about the man who was searching at night under the streetlight for something he lost. Another man comes along and helps him search. After awhile the second man asks, “are you sure you lost it here?” and the first man responds, “no, I lost it over there,” to which the second man asks, “well then why are you searching over here?!” The first man says, “because this is where the light is!”