Another Free Genealogy Resource for Names & Nicknames

Nicknames can sometimes make genealogy difficult, especially when they aren't used consistently. It's not unusual to find an ancestor listed in one record under a nickname and another record with their real name. Trying to match up different names to the same individual requires some knowledge of common nicknames as well as some sleuthing to determine it is in fact the same person.

Today's free genealogy resource is 19th c Victorian Nicknames Girls Female Baby Names from Debra Clifford of Ancestorville Genealogy. Don't be misled by the title. While these nicknames were common during the Victorian era, many were also in use in the years before and after that time. The list includes some names that I wasn't familiar with being associated with a particular nickname so it's worth taking a look to see what you might find.

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Resource for Names

It's not unusual to find an ancestor's name spelled multiple ways over his or her lifetime. Sometimes this is the result of a government official writing down what they thought they heard. In other cases, it may be someone other than your ancestor providing the information, including spelling, for records. In still other cases, your ancestor may have been the reason behind the name variation. If you aren't alert to the possibility of name variations, you could very well miss a record, possibly a key one, because you overlooked it.


The Name Thesaurus is an excellent tool for this purpose. With this free gneealogy resource, you simply search the forename or surname of your ancestor. The results will be displayed in three columns. The first column is the results found using NameX. The second column is the results using Soundex. The final column is the results found using Metaphone.


To understand the results, you need to understand how they are arrived at. With Metaphone, the program removes vowels and maps common consonant variations. While this can result in more matches, it is also less precise.

Soundex transforms words by taking the leading letter and adding up to three digits. This allows it to match names with similar Soundex codes. The problem is that the code may cover several unrelated names in addition to potential variations. It also fails to address names that begin with a different leading letter.

With NameX, name variations are found and weighted. A higher weight indicates a closer match. Unlike Soundex and Metaphone, NameX also takes into account the probable gender of a forename.

If you've hit a brick wall in your genealogy research due to not being able to find certain records, it's definitely worth giving the Name Thesaurus a shot. I searched a few of the surnames in my tree to see how well it worked and managed to come up with several new variations I hadn't considered yet.

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Nicknames

So you have searched for your ancestor in every possible record and came up dry. Have you considered the possibility that the name you believe to be their real name is actually a nickname? Or perhaps the possibility that the reason you are not finding a record under their real name was that a nickname was used in that particular record?

In the past, it was not uncommon for families to name children after other family members. It is not unlikely that you will find a grandfather, father and son sharing the same name. Nicknames were a way of differentiating between family members.

Some Nickname Lists to Try
Female Nicknames from Family Tree Magazine
18th-19th Century Nicknames
CensusDiggins Nickname List
Common Ancestor Nicknames
18th Century PA German Nicknames (also gives Anglicized version of German names)
Common Spanish Nicknames (also gives Anglicized version of Spanish names)
Names and Nicknames
Amish Nicknames

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