Swedish categories

Question

I'm working on my mom's (Swedish) side of the family, and I'm trying to attach categories to them. I'm wondering why the Parish categories look like this: Tvååker (N)

That's so different from all the work I've done on US categories, that I really don't understand it. Since Tvååker (N) is part of Halland County, why isn't Halland included in the category name?

Also, should I be using Sverige or Sweden for the country name in profiles? It appears it's used both ways.

Answer 1

Each county in Sweden is represented in administrative usage by a letter. Halland County happens to be letter N, which is why the (N) is in the category name. The full list of county codes may be found here:
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Swedish_County_Codes

Both Sverige and Sweden are acceptable. Keeping with the language used by the person in the profile Sverige would be more appropriate.

Comments

Thanks Jeffrey. I do not have any personal interest regarding government administration in Sweden. I still found your answer interesting and informative.

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To be clear, if a person was born in Sweden and immigrated to the United States, I should use Sverige instead of Sweden? And if they were born and died in Sweden, then use Sverige as well? An FYI, the software prompts me to use Sweden.

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Those "prompts" are from FamilySearch.

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I personally prefer Sverige in all instances. As Melanie noted, the suggestions for locations are populated by FamilySearch. Any person entering profile information is free to enter it in their native language. I prefer to use the language of the individual being profiled.

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Thanks Jeffrey for linking to the county code explanation.

As for Sverige or Sweden, I used Sweden when I first came to WikiTree in 2016 because everything else in the presentation of the data fields was in English ("Born in", "Died in" et cetera). I did so for a few years and then started using Sverige, also changing my older productions when I have reason to edit them.

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The location prompts come from FamilySearch, as Melanie has already mentioned. I turn them off every time I re-start my browser - the cookie for it is very perishable. They just contain too many errors for Swedish locations to put up with. But I think that from my Swedish IP number they would offer locations with Sverige as the country.

I just made a little experiment, turning them on before creating an American-born child of Swedish-born parents (working on my CC7 :-) As I suspected I got prompted with locations for birth and death with Amerikas Förenta Stater as the country. So FamilySearch through WikiTree knows where I'm sitting with my computer.

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I think if you have a language selected, the dropdown displays in that language.  (I've never tested that, however, so the information may be incorrect.)

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No, you are right, Melanie. That is what the language selection is for. What I find interesting is that I get Swedish when I'm not selecting anything.

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Eva, in my experience, the setting for "location prompts" defaults to On every time you press the "Save Settings" in the Settings menu. You can only unset it by clicking "hide place name suggestions" in the Edit profile view. It's a nuisance, and I'm going to the Settings menu as little as possible because of that. My time zone stays at Daylight Saving all year.

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Yes, Leif, it's a very perishable cookie. I have also noticed that it turns ON the few times I have switched back and forth between the new and the old model for profile creation.

But it also turns ON every time I re-start my browser, which I do a lot more often since getting a new computer this summer, which I actually turn off at night, rather than just putting it to sleep with the browser still open.

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Oh, I'm leaving my Linux computer on for weeks on end. And when I reboot, everything on the desktop comes up exactly as it was, with every tab in every browser window preserved (currently 85, in 8 different Firefox windows). I've had basically the same desktop for years, although I remove some clutter every now and then.

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Hah, I could try turning it off with the browser still open. Might work.

Answer 2

The given answer is good, but I want to clarify that the county (like Hallands län) is not necessarily the relevant higher division, even though you might get that impression from designations like "Tvååker (N)" where the name of the parish alsways goes together with a county code.

The parish is of utmost importance in Swedish genealogy. The parish named "Tvååker" is part of many different bigger units. It was part of "Himle härad" (= hundred). Clerically it was part of "Varbergs kontrakt" (~ deanery) which was part of the Diocese of Gothenburg. It is part of the province "Halland". It is also part of the county named after that province: "Hallands län", which includes most of Halland and parts of Västergötland and Småland. A härad is part of a landskap, not a län.

If you are doing standard lookups in the church archive of Tvååker none of those larger units matter, except for the location of the archive. It is Tvååker parish being in "Hallands län" that has caused that archive to be located in Lund. Most of the time you will only access the parts of the archive that are digitized anyway, and then it doesn't matter where the books really are.

When bigger divisions than the parish are relevant it can be different depending on what clerical, administrative, military, etc. aspect you are using.

What I'm trying to get at is that the county is not so all-important as some are led to believe. It is not at all like US states, for example. The counties are certainly often relevant, but there are also other divisions that ignore county borders.

So why do you see things like "Tvååker (N)" so often? It is mostly because parish names are not unique. There are often several parishes in Swedish with the same name and to differentiate which parish you mean often the härad, the landskap or the län is added. (That is actually not needed for Tvååker, since it is the only parish with that name.)

The län/county is practical to use for that since they have short codes, so it is very common to write "Tvååker (N)", but it is certainly not the only way. When Swedish Wikipedia differentiates between three parishes with the same name "Näs" for example, it is done by province. https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C3%A4s_socken
The Swedish national archive *sometimes* uses counties to differentiate between two church archives for two parishes with the same name.

Comments

The name "Tvååker" is somewhat amusing with its two consecutive å's. I suppose that it's a compound name, possibly meaning "two fields"?

Edit: I looked it up in Wikipedia, and it seems like the original meaning is "flax field" (Toaker in old Danish). I seem to remember that "tow" in English can mean flax also.

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That's what it sounds like to a Swedish ear, but as often it turns out that the original etymology was something else. The earliest recorded version of the name is "Toaker" (from 1198) where "to" is an old dialect word for flax.

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And "tovgarn" is flaxen yarn made with the shorter fibres included.

As for the county letters in the Swedish location categories, I feel an urge every time they come up, to explain that the structure was decided before I became involved. At that time the current formal process for deciding category structures was still a couple of years in the future. Also, the Category Picker had not yet been introduced.

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Way off topic, of course, but Halland was part of Denmark until 1658. Probably the Swedes were a little too eager to translate the old Danish place names, and thought that the "to" in Toaker meant the number two ("to" in Danish, "två" in Swedish for our international public).

I looked up "tow" in Wikipedia, too. It's actually the coarse fibers from the flax plant.

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I believe the National Archives uses the county to differentiate between like-named parishes only when their records are to be found in the same archive location. Thus, since Tuna in Uppsala County and Tuna in Södermanland County are both archived in Uppsala, they are listed as Tuna (C-län) and Tuna (D-län), while Tuna in Västernorrland County (archived in Härnösand) and Tuna in Kalmar County (archived in Vadstena), are not so specified.

There is one case where a higher level than the parish is important, although it is not applicable to Tvååker. In the county of Skaraborg (and also, I think, Älvsborg) the church books were kept at the pastorat level -- not the same as a kontrakt, but also (I think) comparable to a deanery. A pastorat consists of a main parish and one or more minor parishes (annexförsamlingar), and in Skaraborg, people moving from one pastorat to another are usually noted as if moving from and to the main parish, even if they actually moved from or to one of the minor ones, and also in the column for birth place they usually have the main parish once they have moved out of their birth pastorat (even after they return to it). So in these parts of Sweden, if you cannot find somebody and the records say they came from a main parish of a pastorat, they can often be found in one of the minor ones instead.

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I think this pastorat thing with a mother parish and annexes - where only the pastorat is noted when people move to another pastorat -  occurs in more parts of the country than only Västergötland. It's just very noticeable in Västergötland because parishes are so small. You only have to sneeze and you're across the border ;-)

Answer 3

Since you folks have so graciously educated me on Swedish parishes, counties and other governmental divisions as well as minutiae on the etymology of "Tvååker", I wonder if I could prevail upon you a little more.

I have, as much as I'm able to with my simple understanding of all things Swedish, been attempting to use proper surnames for my ancestors.

For example, one ancestor, Pehr Johannesson is often rendered Per Johansson, but the records spell his given name Pehr. So, I have used Pehrsson and Pehrsdotter for all his children.

Johannes is often rendered Johansson, but I've been rendering it Johannesson and Johannesdotter.

Have I been doing this correctly? Or are the name conventions more flexible than I understood them to be?

Comments

Yes, the name conventions and spellings are pretty flexible. I don't think any of us will have objections to your choices.

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Thank you.