Immigrant Parent Surname Spelling

Question

I've just adopted the Malar-2 profile. He's on my CC-7 list, so I'll be adding sources and giving him a biography, but my research shows me that he's the US-born son of immigrants from Switzerland.

It appears that they adopted the spelling "Malar" when they immigrated, because that's pretty much the only spelling I see in the U.S.

However, I'm seeing variants in the transcriptions of the church records for his elder siblings who were born in Switzerland. At this point, I'm not sure if I will create profiles for his parents, but I would like to include the most likely spellings for their names in his biography.

For Anton's father, I'm seeing three basic variants: Malaer, Mallär, and Malär. Not knowing anything about naming conventions, I'm thinking that Mallär is probably his father's LNAB, but I haven't worked with Swiss naming conventions.

Did I guess correctly?

Answer 1

In the list of Swiss surnames (https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/famn/index.php) I found only Malär to be a Swiss name before 1800. Malär was/is the name of families in Molinis and Trimmis, communities in the canton of Graubünden. However, the spelling at the time may have been different. When in doubt, I use the spelling used in the list of Swiss surnames.

Comments

Perfect. That's exactly where his father is supposed to have been born.

Follow-on question: Should his mother's LNAB be spelled "Thöni" or "Töni"?

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Both spellings (Thöni and Töni) were used in different places.  So depending where the place of origin (Heimatgemeinde) of his mother was, one or the other is correct.

Answer 2

Katrina,  I have lot's of Swiss ancestors and have done research into Swiss records.  The one thing I can add to your query is that the umlat vowell  (the a with the dots over it) is often written in english as ae, so that the original spelling is with the umlat.