terrill vs tirrell

Hi, I was just working on the Tirrells / Terrells. I'd be glad to help.

Unfortunately I believe that the only way to approach this is to put the variant in the Also Known As field.

Spelling was quite variable in the pre-Revolutionary era.

Gideon Tirrell

So the way that you have done it is also acceptable, although harder to read.

An alternative is to put one variant in Birth Name and one in Last Name. I prefer putting the variant in Also Known As, but there is a drawback to that.

The problem is that there are so many Tirrells, that it is better to wait until Geni improves their Search than to spend a lot of time editing every single profile.

Erica Howton - any ideas or comments?

I worked on a Tirrell family in Knox County, Ohio recently that was somehow connected with another family I worked on.

search by soundslike might be handy or kinda looks like instead of an exact match when it comes to spelling. I have live relatives all across the country who pronounce the name differently and with regional accents. I guess I will wait and see what Geni does to improve the search.

I agree with you. I have been hoping since My Heritage bought Geni that we would see some improvement in Search so that soundalike names like Terrill and Tirrell and Tyrell were found. There are of course advantages and disadvantages, but they can always keep the option to have a tighter or looser match.

As someone whose surname has been "always" misspelled :) I think I find it best to work on legibility & historic accuracy most of all, and let the geniuses optimize search as they can.

So I tend to "normalize" surnames in Geni profiles as I work through a merge to historian standards (contemporary spelling). Sometimes there is a documentable / citable change from generation to generation, in which case I would do something like this

Surname at birth: Tirrell
Last name: Terrill
Also known as: Terill, Tyrell

Currently search does look in AKA so that will bring it up if someone is thinking Tyrell as the name.

Thanks for info...
AKA Dave,Hey you,dad,cuz

"Hey cuz" should be added to all profile AKA's ....:)

http://www.geni.com/path/Hatte+Anne+Blejer+is+related+to+David+Arth...

Looks like I can call you Cuz :)