In message <[email protected]>, j halsey <[email protected]> writes >Could I please have advice from the list re the "correct" transcription of >the old double "f" at the beginnining of words and, in particular, names, >such as "ffrye" which today would be written as "Fry". To maintain accuracy >of transcription - which I suspect to most people means to report, as best >as one can, the form and content of old documents - should the 16th and >17th cc "double-f" be shown in transcription as a single letter or as a >double? It is really just a way of writing a capital F, so representing it by a modern capital F would be logical. It is like the capital W, which for a long period was written as a Vsuperimposed on a U (as the two letters were alternatives). We wouldn't write vv or uu for that, so we shouldn't write ff for F. Having said that, there were a number of families, come late in the day to literacy and fortune, who looked back and saw their name written as ffysh or ffoxe and insisted on reverting to that 'version'. The Barons French for some generations called themselves ffrench, till the penny dropped. The classical example is Sir Jasper ffloulenough, as a type name for a villain. -- Eve McLaughlin Author of the McLaughlin Guides for family historians Secretary Bucks Genealogical Society

Thank you Eve for your helpful reply. Problem solved ! Jim Halsey