Dear Lori: You were going to check with someone and see if it was okay for you to give me copies of those records from Switzerland. This was several months ago...would you have an answer yet??? I will be glad to reimburse you for copy and mailing costs... Thanks Gerry >From: Gilles & Lori Beneteau <[email protected]> >Reply-To: [email protected] >To: [email protected] >Subject: [GEIGER] Geiger spellings >Date: Sun, 05 Sep 1999 09:58:17 -0400 > >Hi everyone, > My family tree is full of names that have been misspelled or have >different ways of spelling them. My Geiger ancestors came from >Switzerland and in Switzerland the name was spelled Gyger. I actually >have a copy of the birth recordings from the canton and the name is >spelled Gyger. Over here in Canada, and their cousins in the US, >spelled it Geiger, but on some wills and other documents I have also >seen it spelled Giger. When doing my research, I never discount any >spelling. Years ago it didn't matter how it was spelled, as long as it >sounded like it was said was all that really mattered. I have in my >family tree lots of German names that had the umlaut (the two dots over >a vowel) but once they came to North America, the changed the spelling >because they wanted to anglicize it. As for immigration officers >recording names wrong, my paternal Grandmother's maiden name is a prime >example. Her name was McNain, but the only time you find a McNain is >from our family. We have been told that when her ancestor came to >Canada from Scotland, he was illiterate and told the immigration officer >his name in his heavy Scots brogue, the officer just took a guess and >wrote what he thought he heard. I really have no hope of tracing this >line. Oh well. Genealogy is just one big puzzle to be solved piece by >piece, and it sure is addictive! >Lori > > >==== GEIGER Mailing List ==== >To contact the list moderator--Joan M. Young: send a message to >[email protected] Check out our Webpage at: >http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~geiger/ > >============================== >Search the Social Security Death Index online for FREE! >http://ssdi.genealogy.rootsweb.com/ >The most powerful SSDI search engine on the Internet! > _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com