Knowing how your relative likely said their name makes it easier to know when you have run across a reasonable variant or to determine what variants for which to look.

There are numerous genealogy groups on social media where you can find out how your Swedish ancestor said their last name, how your Irish ancestor may have pronounced his place of birth, or the way your German ancestor may have said his first name. This knowledge matters.

Sometime before she died, I heard my great-grandmother say her grandmother’s maiden name of “Behrens.” It sounded somewhat like a combination of Burnes and Barnes with a little more “umph” to it that one would say “Burnes” or “Barnes.” But that is why I find the name written as Barnes, Burnes, Byrnes, etc.

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  1. Two cases in point. My great-grandmother was “Bushell” in all the written records, but her daughter-in-law, my grandmother, always pronounced it “BushNell”. Was it my grandmother’s accent that said it this way? Many of my DNA cousins along this branch also spell it with the “N” even though it didn’t have the ‘N’ when written.
    My own name, McCloskey, is pronounced as if the ‘o’ was a ‘u’, to rhyme with ‘cluck’.
    The name, when spelled in Irish, has BOTH an ‘O’ and a ‘U’ (nicBlouscaidh); my Irish cousins pronounce it like I do, with the ‘u’. So it must be some odd quirk of Irish pronunciation rules.
    I see many names in American census records that are spelled phonetically, as my family would have said it. Makes searches interesting!

    I read all your posts, Michael, even though I comment rarely.

    PS I have a cousin Michael (the father) and a son, Micheal, pronounced mee-HAUL just bcause of that switch of the ‘a’ and ‘e’ in the spelling.

    • Thanks for the comments and for regularly reading–I appreciate it.

      When I mention pronunciation issues, I sometimes get told that it “doesn’t matter for English speakers in the US” and that this is just an “immigrants who don’t speak English problem.”

      As your comment shows and as I know from my Kentucky, Virginia, and other US ancestors, the ethnicity doesn’t always matter in things like this. There are quite a few names where the pronunciation can create additional variants.

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