Oh, I see now that there is some ambiguity here. When I equated "Joes" to "Johannes", I meant Joes as a single name in itself, not as the plural of Joe. Joe would still be short for Joseph, of course, though I've not seen any German records with that shortened version of the name. Mostly I've seen "Josef". But "Joes" in my experience is a contraction for Johannes. Sometimes I've seen it written with some kind of contraction symbol on the top, not an apostrophe but something like a "u". Johannes is of course translated to John in English, (and Ivan in Russian, Ian in Scottish Gaelic, Sean in Irish Gaelic, Juan in Spanish, Jean in French, etc. ) Knowing how names translate is important, because often church records would be written with one form of the name and civil records another. Or, when the person emigrated, he or she may have taken on, or been given, a more local form of the name. Many German immigrants to the US and Canada Anglicized their names during or after World War I. Another common Anglization, besides John and Joseph, is James. James is actually the English version of Jacob. By the way, did you know the American football player "Mean" Joe Green would have been called Guiseppe Verdi in Italian? I always get a kick out of that one. (g) I personally have seen many people named Adam in my German ancestors. They spelled it the same way we do in English too. Regards, Mark, who really was baptised Marcus Johannes Lesmeister. -----Original Message----- From: Jim & Sondra Brown [mailto:cats@eosinc.com] Sent: Saturday, January 23, 1999 8:23 PM To: TRIER-ROOTS-L@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [TRIER-ROOTS-L] What's in a Name? If Joe is Johannes then what is John? Is Adam a frequently used German name? Sondra ==== TRIER-ROOTS Mailing List ==== Greatest Christmas Gift Ever! Support RootsWeb! Help provide FREE genealogical resources on the Internet: http://www.rootsweb.com/rootsweb/how-to-subscribe.html