Place Name Errors Cause Numbers to Double
As I move forward on the O’Connell One-Name Study (ONS), I am learning new things. Most importantly, is transcriptions issues on websites. Obviously, this is nothing new. Any seasoned genealogist can tell you the many different ways they have found their names slaughtered in different transcripts.
What I learned over the past few days has nothing to do with the names being miss transcribed. My current issue is place names. For example, I have exported the 1831 Ireland Census from FamilySearch, by surname. In the case on my ONS, there are 4 variants of O’Connell in this Census. Each surname was exported by exact spelling only. So for the variant of Connelly, it showed 16 individuals enumerated.
Once I pulled the information into a spreadsheet, there were notes associated with two people. The same exact note. So, I then looked at the complete list and it was obvious by the way the names were and the places they lived that the list was duplicated with the first and the middle person being the same. The reason, the place names were spelled differently.
So before you use the numbers to see how big your study is, it would due to export the information out and look for any patterns in the names or notes for the same names.
