No results in search for current last name

Question

With Norwegian profiles, the standard is to use the patronym as LNAB and the last farm the person lived on as the current last name. Well, I just tried to search for Sjurseike and came up empty-handed, though several of the profiles I manage have that name as the current last name (example below).

It would be handy to be able to search for farm names that are used as current last names. Does the last name search function not work if the name was never used as a LNAB? (that was a really awkward sentence. I hope it was clear enough!)

Answer 1

I have just done a quick test and it looks like you only get the empty list if the only search item you enter is the surname. If you enter something else too, either searching for a surname and a date or a surname and a place (I tried Norway in the Birth Location) then you get results. Not ideal, but at least it might be a temporary workaround until the issue is fixed.

Comments

Thanks for the suggestion. It worked for me when I added Norway as place of birth. Too bad the only profiles I found were my own family!

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My solution to this limitation with searches has been to put an asterisk (*) wildcard in the first-name field.

It's good to know that inserting a location in the search box also works!

Answer 2

I don't think that it's a terribly good idea to search for farm names, for several reasons. One is that they can be spelled in a myriad ways, and you can't expect others to spell them in exactly the same way as you do. I see that you've included a couple of variant spellings "Syverseike, Siurseiche" - and that's probably only the top of the iceberg.

Some farm names are used all over the country, for instance Nes (Næss), Vik (Wiig), Fjell (Fjeld) or Dal (Dahl). You'll find them in almost every parish. Looking for those is like looking for Olsens.

I for one rarely record farm names as Current last name at all, because I hate to see names like "Ole Dal formerly Olsen" on the profile screen. "Ole Olsen aka Dal" looks a lot better.

Comments

Hi Leif. I was hoping you'd weigh in here. I thought that creating the standard was partly to help with searches. When I search for a last name, I get results for every variant spelling of that last name, so that's what I was hoping for with the farm name search. I suppose that's too much to hope for.

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I doubt if a search for "Last name" will give you every variant spelling of that name. What you get is a selection that match the Soundex for that surname. But Soundex works poorly for Norwegian variant spellings. I had to develop custom routines for fuzzy matching in my own database, so I happen to know quite a bit about this.

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I agree that "Ole Olsen Aka Dal" sounds better than the other way round, but I would have preferred the current standard for "husmenn" and others that moved often, but patronymicon as middle name and farm at birth for farm owners who either stayed all their life at one farm or moved ones to marry. This would also fit better for the 17th century and earlier, when patronymicons were rarely mentioned in tax records.

Searching for Olsen is virtually meaningless, but even searching for a common name like Berg, could be meaningful. In my own system I use the patronymicon as part of first name and today's official spelling of farm names as LNAB, but realize that it would be difficult for non-Norwegians to be able to find that.

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We can't have one standard for those who stayed put on a farm and another one for everybody else. That would ultimately lead to even greater confusion. "Patronym as LNAB" is a simple rule which is easy to follow.

Answer 3

Searching with WikiTree+ is an alternative. Searching "Sjurseike" gets you 13 results because the search is Google-like, place names containing Sjurseike are also in the result set. See this query (press Get profiles for result)

Comments

Unrelated, but I wonder if I can use Wikitree+ to search for people with surname van Veenendaal who were born in Soest, without getting people who were born in Veenendaal or with surname van Soest?

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No, not exactly, you would get all profiles where van and Veenendaal and Soest are values in any data items, see this query. Looks quite usable, but of course in general that would vary, depending on search words.

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Thanks, Jan! The query didn't help much with the particular problem I was trying to solve, but I can see its possibilities. I'm sure I'll be using your method a lot in the future.