Ernest Thode writes a column in The Palatine Immigrant , a publication of the "Palatines to America" organization. I enjoy reading his work and find the Notes are educational also. Mr. Thode published the German to English Genealogical Dictionary, which I have referred to here before. This large work is crammed with words that the researcher is apt to encounter, but it must be admitted that one will encounter words that are not given in this work. (I had such a word once and asked three people what it might mean and I got three answers.)
The material in this Note is taken from the December 2005 Palatine Immigrant Journal . The subject is the various ways that "George" can be spelled. The name is quite old as it comes from the Greek meaning farmer. Before the Reformation, Georg was the 7th most popular male given name, coming after Hans, Peter, Christian, Martin, Nicolaus/Claus, and Jacob. By 1700, it had improved its standing to fifth, with about 5% of the male population being given this name.
In the southern German regions (Oberdeutsch), such as Switzerland and southern Baden, there are these spellings: Gerg, Gergel, Girg, Girgel, Gorg, Görge, Görgel, Gürgel, Jörg, and Jörgel. In the Black Forest area, Jörg is especially common.
In the northern German areas (Niederdeutsch), such as Hannover, Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein, and Mecklenburg, there are these spellings: Gorch, Gorg, Jürg, Jürgen, Juriann, Jurian, Jörn, Jurn, and Jürn. In the Rhineland, such as Cologne or Bonn, there are these variations: Göres, Görres, Schorsch, and Schorschel (these latter two are due to the French influence).
To cover a little more of Europe, the Slavic forms are Juri, Jur, and Jurek. The Hungarian form is Györgi and the Russian form is Georgi.
I remember a speaker once at a "Pennsylvania Palatines to America" meeting who was a resource person at the LDS library to help people find their ancestors. She said that if she had a ship’s passenger list, she could often tell from which part of Germany they came by the spellings of the given names. And probably even the surnames reflected regional spellings.
It used to bother me that one encountered these variant spellings in the German records. The given names from around the First Colony often seemed to differ from the Second Colony names. Eventually, I can to accept that there are variations, even for Hans, which is sometimes Hanss or Hannss.
(25 Jan 06)
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.