Posts in April 18, 2026

Many websites allow for the use of wildcards when performing searches. These tools search for a variety of alternate spellings with one search term. Typically an asterisk provides the broadest sort of wildcard search. In this case, a word that has any number of letters in place of the * symbol will be returned. Neil* returns Neil, Neill, Neily, Neilly, Neilsen, Neilson, etc. G*ldenst*n returns Goldenstein, Goldenstien, Guldenstein, Guldenstien, but not Goldstein. H*le returns Hale, Hole, Hostle, etc. It never hurts to review a list of alternate spellings to make certain that wildcard searches will return references to all those spellings. Normally I use “tr*t*tter in order to search for variations on Trautvetter. It catches most of them and also does not return references to the last name […]