Initial letters or prefixes of names can be intentionally or inadvertently omitted, with:
- Knight becoming Night
- Hoffman becoming Aufmann
- O’Neill becoming Neill
- MacArthur becoming Arthur
- Van De Burg becoming Berg
- etc.
Is it possible a first letter or two was dropped when your name of interest was entered in a record? 
4 Responses
And the opposite, was one added? My Yorkshire ancestor’s surname Armitage became Harmitage (but only in once census — or far, at least).
Not quite the same but I have an O’Hara who became an Ahara.
Gosh I hope not! Schmidinger is enough without extra letters! 🙂
Boy, this really gets me to thinking about playing with family name . All the misses of missing information I may have missed.