LNAB officially corrected for the whole family several decades later - how do I proceed?

+9 votes
210 views
Dear Treefolk,

I'm really unsure how to proceed with the LNAB in this case, so I wanted to ask before I create the profiles:

Johannes Renier Minjolet (* Grevenbicht / NL 17 Jul 1864) marries Elisabeth Martin in Düsseldorf in 1886. The marriage takes place under the name Johann Reiner Mingelée, all children from 1886 to 1901 are also initially entered in the birth registers under the surname ‘Mingelée’, and the father also signs himself as ‘Reiner Mingélee’. It was not until April 1910 (!) that the father's surname and first name were corrected for all seven children and parents still alive at the time. The name registers for the birth certificates were corrected accordingly, and a corresponding note was added to the parents' marriage certificate and all birth certificates. All of the family subsequently run, marry or die under the correct surname ‘Minjolet’.

Now I could of course enter the LNAB with Mingelée and add an explanation under the research notes, but actually pretty much everyone will search for the family under ‘Minjolet’ - what should I do?

I am grateful for any advice - best regards and many thanks in advance!  Heike :-)
in Policy and Style by Heike Blumreiter G2G6 Mach 4 (45.9k points)
edited by Heike Blumreiter
LNAB = Mingelée

CLN = Minjolet

Explain in biography.
I would do the same as Jillaine.
Thank you Jillaine - that will at least lead to finding all the men - but what about the four daughters, who all married so that their CLN is not Minjolet but their married name? Another problem is the correction in the name indices to the birth registers - they were changed to "Minjolet" - so if you look for Mingelee, you won't find that ...
For women, the correct way then would be Minjolet in Other Last Name(s) and married name in Current Last Name.
as "Last Name At Birth" is exactly what its named, the conclusion is that other names need to go in another field. There are other cases than yours, such as adoptions or name changes because of a second marriage of the mother.

You can state in the biography, why and when the surname changed and that it was also corrected in the indices of the birth registers.
I would differentiate between name change and name correction.

The field is "Last Name at Birth" and not "Last Name Officially Recorded at Birth".

See the help page about Name Fields.

Some single lines copied from there:
- When conventions changed during a person's lifetime:
-- The Proper First Name and Last Name at Birth fields should be the names they were born with, in their native language.
-- The Preferred First Name and Current Last Name should be the names they used at the end of their life.
- Last Name at Birth: It is usually the formal name as it appears in official documents at the time of birth. However, it may not be exactly what appears in a birth record if:
-- There was a spelling mistake or error in the document, or if the family name was more commonly spelled in a different way at the time of the birth (see the spelling conventions section above).
-- The person was adopted as an infant and they never used their birth name.

1 Answer

+5 votes

Hello Heike,

when a family name changes over time, I would agree with Jillaine.

But you write "officially corrected": It seems that you have an officially statement that the name Mingelée was wrong.

In this case you can consider to use the corrected name as LNAB. It may depend on the whole circumstances. I think it's up to the profile manager to find a decision.

In my example:

Johann Heinrich Barnscheidt reported the birth of his son which was registered as Johann Heinrich Gustav Bannscheidt, but the father signed Barnscheidt.

J. H. Gustav was married as Bannscheidt and reported the birth of his son as Wilhelm Bannscheidt. Wilhelm was married as Bannscheidt. But after the death of his father J. H. Gustav there was a court order that the correct name was Barnscheidt. This was noted on several (wrong) civil register records. But Wilhelms death record had then originally the name Barnscheidt. So I decided: Last Name at Birth was Barnscheidt and Other Last Name was Bannscheidt.

But Wilhelms daughter Mathilde Bannscheidt was already married. Her birth name was never corrected. So I let the wrong name be her Last Name at Birth. Her brothers names were corrected.

by Siegfried Keim G2G6 Mach 5 (59.4k points)

Hello Siegfried, 

thank you - this is exactly my problem. The correct family name was "Minjolet" and it did not just develop to "Mingelée" or was a name change but was simply used wrong and then was officially corrected by order of court - as I wrote in my post - in 1910 on all civil birth records of the seven children still living in 1910 as well as on the marriage record of their parents from 1886. (I think the problem came to mind because the widow "Müngeler" (!), mother of Johannes Renier Minjolet, had died shortly before and they had to settle the inheritance, which in Germany involves submitting all kinds of documents.)

If the name had developped into another form, I would have done like Jillaine said without any pondering, and if the correction had taken place shortly after the births of the children I would have followed your example of Johann Heinrich Barnscheidt. What throws me into such doubt is the great temporal disparity between the events and the court order ...

Well, I will ponder a little longer - the profiles are not created yet so that no harm is done, and thank you all very much for your input!

Kind regards from Heike :-)

It can be argued that at least some official changes to birth records are retrospective, and erase the original name completely. If that point of view is accepted in this case, the last name at birth on WikiTree should be Minjolet.

Hello Heike,

who said, genealogy would be easy? laugh

Dear Jim, this is very helpful - thank you very much, it really does clear the problem for me :-)

But please, enter then Mingelée as Other Last Name. laugh One could search for it …

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