Is there a committee for standardizing names?

Question

I've recently been working on the Great Migration families, one in particular has me puzzled. I found thes four spellings, Cheeseborogh,  Chesebrough, Cheesbrough Cheeseborough, all four taken from Cheeseborough-2’s profile.  If we could standardize the name,  settle on one spelling, we could potentially reduce the number of duplicates by a factor of 4. 

Comments

Note that only LNAB and current last name are used for searching, and only exact spellings (no soundex). Entries in the 'Other Names' are useful for documentation when various spellings appear mostly before 1800. If a name was changed be sure to list one as LNAB and the other as Current. If a name has changed multiple times r has multiple variations (i.e. multiple husbands, immigration, de X instead of X) you need to decide which two are the most important/likely for finding matches/relationships/duplicates.

Answer 1

That is one of the purposes of the user groups. If you're not sure which spelling is best, the group can discuss and pick one. Alternate spellings can then go in the Other Last Names field.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say that it would reduce the number of duplicates. There shouldn't be a duplicate profile for each spelling, anyway. Those profiles should be merged regardless of which spelling they use.

Comments

Spelling of Arcadian names differ even in the same family. Another thing to consider, the census taker didn't always understand the speech pronouncement of the name. My mother in law's father's name was Oscar yet it sounded like "Ash ca". Moses was pronouce "Mo ese".