Genealogy Pronunciation Trick

 

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.org

My blog is late today as I had unexpected tech issues, the bane of my existence!  This past week, first my husband and then I, noticed an "enter code" button that appeared on any Microsoft product we were using on our desktops.  It finally dawned on us that the educator license we had with Microsoft was being removed since we both retired from our academic careers this month.  This was a totally unexpected situation as we had paid for a license for our computers that didn't expire.  Microsoft only allows military veterans to continue and not educators.  Who knew?!  Took the time this morning to buy two new licenses - one for my business and the other for home use.  The Microsoft site was not working well and wouldn't allow me to save my domain info so I'm going to have to go back on later.  After the slow download I freaked out when I opened Word and only documents from 2019 showed up.  I was able to open two docs from my desktop I just created in the last two weeks and once they opened, they showed in the list when I reopened Word. I then went to Dropbox and opened a pdf from January and a doc from last August.  Once opened, they show in the Word list.  I don't understand this at all but as long as I can open older documents as I need them, I'm good.  

Here's an update on my Bible blog from last week - got a heartwarming thank you from my distant cousin who will be receiving the Landfair Bible.  I'm so glad it found a good home, away from hurricanes, humidity and mold.  Remember this story this week when you run into a rude person - there are a lot of good people out there, just not everyone!

Now, for today....

I had a wonderful 2 day Professional Management Conference hosted by APG.  It was just awesome reconnecting with other professional genealogists in the break out sessions and the lectures were informative.  I plan to be adding a page to Genealogyatheart.com with my lectures soon.  Unfortunately, the terms of my retirement do not allow me to "teach" in any format for the next 6 months so that's all on hold for awhile.  The conference did nudge me into making proposals to my state genealogy group with ideas for journal articles.  I'll be writing 3 for upcoming issues.  Working on the first, along with the Bible interaction last week, gave me the idea for today's blog.

Let's think of the Louis Armstrong song, You Say Tomato.  Genealogy is fraught with pronunciation problems.  When I spoke to the lady from Ohio about the Bible, I told her I did not live close to either Lima (lee mah) or Celina (Seh lee nah).  She replied she didn't either and then laughed.  In Ohio, those places are known as (lie mah) and (sel lie nah).  

This got me thinking about why it's sometimes so difficult for us to find an ancestors former residence.  We aren't seeing it in print - we're hearing it.  Same issue with census enumerators hearing our ancestors and misunderstanding their English as a second language pronunciation. This week, I've been researching a local family from Greece.  Their name evolved from the original spelling from the first generation to how the name is pronounced in English for the second generation.  Loved the Find-A-Grave note that was added by the memorial creator explaining why the names were different!

To complicate the situation, the same word can be pronounced differently depending on the location.  One of my children spent time in both Grenada's.  That would be Gre nae dah, West Indies and Gre nah dah, Spain.  

Next time you are stuck on a location or surname, try thinking about it in a variety of ways.  Type the word in Google and add "pronunciation."  Try this for "Lima Ohio pronunciation" and Lima Peru pronunciation." Pretty neat trick!