It is possible your friend does not understand the patronymic naming system? For reasons unfathomable to me, that's the first hurdle I have to explain to non-genealogy researchers who are interested in their Norwegian roots and know I have the information on their family as well as our mutual family. They can't quite grasp the fact that the patronym changes from one generation to the next (until one gets to the son who is named for the father, and then you have a double name, so to speak, like Ole Olsen or Ingebrigt Ingebrigtsen, etc.). With certain exceptions where people started using inherited family names (surnames as we know them), particularly in the cities, Norway did not go to a surname system until they passed a law mandating the change in 1923. I've worked with a few different kinds of "American name changes." One was a fellow who decided on an arbitrary name he liked and the siblings who arrived before and after him eventually adopted his new name choice, but in US census data they go back and forth between their original patronymic name and the new arbitrary name for a few decades. Luckily, the whole family knew the original name vs the name they now still carry. One woman who married into the line that married one branch of my family started out with Olsdatter in Norway, emigrated at age 11 with her father whose patronym Halvorsen became the American surname Halvorson (gleaning info on her was a nightmare at first because once I got it all straightened out, the info in her obit was mostly about her husband of the known name change I noted above). Her brothers, on the other hand, took the name of the farm on which they had lived as their American surname. One family who arrived in Wisconsin and made their way to northwestern Minnesota started out using the patronymic naming system (it's in the US census data), and while the father kept his own patronymic name, his sons kept their correct patronymic names, but their descendants were given the father's patronym which had become an American surname by then. With females, the American system of surnames does not accept datter as a suffix..., so they often became the sons of their father (so to speak) when whoever wrote names got the first part of the patronym correct (the father's name), but didn't/wouldn't write datter as a suffix and wrote son instead. Women would sometimes use their father's patronymic name as their American surname. Or the name of their birth farm. Or the name of the farm on which they last lived before they emigrated. There are several ways the name could have been different. And then... there's the matter of the names beginning with Christ/Krist in the church records. Sometimes the minister writing the names would substitute Christ/Krist with an X..., and you end up with Xoffer/Xopher, Xoffersen/Xophersen, Xoffersdatter/Xophersdatter, Xian, Xiansen/Xiansdatter. Then there are the interchangeable letters with Q/K, I/J... etc. It's understandable if you find the new site a bit difficult. I still do, too. The old Digitalarkivet site's search engine is much easier to use and there's an index of databases available in each fylke. I often wish the new site had the same lists with added info (the new site is not adding to the old indices). These are only a few pieces of trivia one must keep in one's head while doing genealogy research in Norway. Don't worry. It gets easier. :-) Beste, Bev On 2/14/2017 10:36 PM, Virginia Lindsey wrote: > Thanks Don and Reina for your information on the Christophersen family. Some > of the information does not quite make sense and I am thinking that my > friend gave me some poor information. I will have to check back with the > friend-who is gone for a month. I will get back to you later as you seem to > be able to get information off Digitalarkivet better than I can. I cannot > figure out what I am during wrong. > > Virginia > >