I represent the third consecutive generation, both from my mother's and father's side, actively researching our family history.

Corrections, additions and comments to profile I manage much appreciated!

You can write in English, Swedish or Finnish.

Skriv gärna på svenska om du tar kontakt!

Yhteydenotot mielellään myös suomeksi!

I don't follow the guestbook below actively, please use the messaging system or email me directly instead: m a r k u s . a b e r g (#) g m a i l . c o m

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I usually try to include links to original sources in the profiles:

The Genealogical Society of Finland, HisKi project. Searchable church parish records

http://hiski.genealogia.fi/hiski?en

Finnish National Archives, scanned church records

https://astia.narc.fi/uusiastia/index.html

NOTE that the Finnish National Archives pages are not indexed so it is quite difficult to find the correct page. Please use the crowd-sourced indexing project pages at https://digihakemisto.net to navigate the F.N.A pages and contribute by saving your own additions to the indexes. It is very easy to contribute, no login or registration is needed, just add the new information if it does not exist yet and press save!

Finland's Family History Association / Suomen Sukuhistoriallinen Yhdistys, scanned church records

http://www.sukuhistoria.fi/sshy/index.htm

(SSHY members get access to more records after logging in to the service)

Please consider adding links to the material above in your profiles, in my experience it greatly enhances the value of the profile information.

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Regarding names I usually use the form in the original records as long as it is consistent. E.g. "Eric Henriksson" would be "Eric Henriksson" if his name is consistently written in the same way in all the records. Whenever there are variants or in unclear situations I always try to use "standardized" names. E.g. in case of a born "Eric Henricsson" marrying as "Erik Hinrichson" I would use the standardized "Erik Henriksson".

Sveriges Släktforskarförbund in Sweden has a semi-official list of standardized names online:

https://wiki.rotter.se/images/2/26/S%C3%A5_stavar_du_namnen_-_Sl%C3...

Regarding translating names written originally in Swedish in the church records into Finnish:

This is something that some people do and others do not. E.g. Peter Andersson vs Petri Antinpoika. Personally I would prefer to see the names as originally written in the records, especially in shared trees like the Geni one, as matching duplicates is already difficult as it is without additional problems.

Even if one could be 100% certain that the the person in question was Finnish-speaking (in some Swedish speaking region books the priest has noted down the comment FENNO for instance) then there is still uncertainty whether "Erik" was really called "Erkki" and not "Eerikki", or "Eero". Also note that some regions that today are predominantly Finnish-speaking had a sizeable Swedish-speaking minority in the 1600-1800s. For instance Kaarlela / Kokkola and even Kelviå / Kälviä had Swedish-speaking families living on farms with very Finnish-sounding names like Kotkama and Hassinen. For more information please google for the pro-gradu "Drengpoikia ja hurrikkaita" by Perttu Immonen.

Many years ago (when I entered my first ~5000 Geni-profiles or so) Geni did not support entering names in many languages. IF you prefer to translate names then PLEASE do this by adding a new language tab ("Edit Profile" + "Add Language") and write the Finnish name in this Finnish language tab. Please don't translate profile names by overwriting the default ("English") information only!

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IMPORTANT NOTES ABOUT USE OF SURNAMES / FAMILY NAMES

As about 50% of my ancestors are from the Ostrobothnia region in Finland I have been actively working on Ostrobothnian Geni-profiles. This region often causes a lot of confusion in people not familiar with local name customs. This is especially true for non-Finns (Americans, Australians, South-Africans,..) searching for their Finnish ancestors among the huge number of emigrants from Finnish Ostrobothnia in the 1860-1920s.

"Real" surnames like we know them today were usually NOT USED by rural laborers in Ostrobothnia before surnames became mandatory in the year 1921. Instead patronyms were used: Matt, the son of John == Matts Johansson and Maria, the daughter of Carl == Maria Carlsdotter.

To distinguish between the hundreds of different Matts Johanssons a farm / homestead name was often added like this: "Matts Johansson Jubbila". What this means in practice is Matts, the son of John, of the farm Jubbila.

It is worth noting that this use of "Jubbila" does NOT mean that Matts was necessarily in any way related to other people "Jubbila", he might just have been a hired hand working on the Jubbila farm.

Usually the farm name attached to a person varied during his/her life, he or she might have been born on the Måsala farm, married when employed on the Korp farm and died while employed on the Jubbila farm and thus present in the parish records as for instance:

Matts Johansson Måsala

Matts Johansson Korp

Matts Johansson Jubbila

All of these are the same person but this person is not necessarily related to other Måsalas, Korps or Jubbilas!

Because of this it is very important NOT TO PRUNE AWAY "additional surnames" in Geni profiles. Doing that removes important information about a person and makes finding duplicates even harder.

It is perfectly "normal" and OK to have 2-4 "surnames" in an Ostrobothnian Geni profile, something like this: Matts Johansson Måsala Korp Jubbila. Choosing which ones to include is more art than science but often names that were used at important moments in life (birth, marriage, emigration, death) are preferred.

Often when a rural laborer emigrated from Ostrobothnia the farm / homestead name that the person was currently resident at was used in the official migration documents. Often this "surname" was later modified or dropped in the new country, so Matts Johansson Jubbila could become Matt Jubell or Matt Johnson. When researching your Finnish ancestors IT IS VITAL TO HAVE AS MUCH STARTING INFORMATION AS POSSIBLE. As you can imagine there were thousands of "Matts Johansson" emigrating and finding out which one of them is "your" Matts Johansson is in practice impossible. To have a fair chance of success you need to have a complete "original" name as used in the immigration / naturalization documents as well as a reasonably close birth year, +/- 3 years or so:

"Matt Johnson, from Finland": Not a chance

"Matts Johansson Måsala, born ca 1864, emigrated in 1884": Fair chance

All of this sounds really difficult but fortunately many people nowadays have experience in Ostrobothnian genealogy and this combined with the (often) good quality parish records (often) makes it possible to sort out your Ostrobothnian ancestry all the way to the early 1700s and sometimes even further.