Dear Genners, In Naomi Ogin's email, she mentions a web site that is a listing of various name spellings for Freedman. The topic of name changes is one that has both fascinated and frustrated me, as I'm sure it has you too. On an academic note, I had always wondered how many variants there could be for a name and where could one find such a list. Eventually I stumbled across Avotaynu's Consolidated Jewish Surname Index, which does fill this need with one caveat. What the CJSI has done is to create an index based upon the names appearing in a large number of books. So yes, it does rather depend upon whether "your" name (or a variant) is in one or more of these books. So go to the Avotaynu web site (www.avotaynu.com) and click on the last listing on the right hand side bar (Search Jewish Surnames). Enter the name of interest and what you will get back will be the Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex number plus all the variants of that name as they appear in one of the books. Like every method, it isn't foolproof, but it did give me some choices as to how Brookstone might have been spelled in the old country. And last Saturday when researching at my local Family History Center, I showed it to a JGS member and it helped her with a very unusual name. Good luck! -- Jeremy G Frankel ex Edgware, London, England Berkeley, California, USA EBIN: Russia, New York, USA FRANKEL: Poland, London, England GOLDRATH/GOLD: Praszka, Poland, London, England KOENIGSBERG: Vilkaviskis, Lithuania, London, England, NYC, NY, USA LEVY (later LEADER): Kalisz, Poland, London, England PRINCZ/PRINCE: Krakow, Poland, London, England, NYC, NY, USA