As I research my family, I find many different spelling for surnames in the
old Church books.
Is there a accepted standard method of recording surnames?
Currently, I record the names as shown in the book.
I have been considering changing the names to the current spelling and
entering the baptismal/marriage names as an aka. Is this a wise idea, or
should I enter the current spelling as the aka, or just stay with the status
quo.
What are your thoughts?
Ronald J Repking
Flossmoor, Illinois
Hi, Ron.
I don't know what the accepted standard method might be. I'll be
interested to see others' replies.
I personally like to retain original spellings as much as possible, or at
least make a note if there are too many versions to include in the space.
I think "cleaning up" a genealogy to have everything all uniform when it
wasn't uniform to begin with is probably not a good idea. IMHO 
Greetings from a neighbor to the north,
Marilyn in Wisconsin
From a neighbor to the South 
The preferred way from a historical standpoint is to record everything
as we find it and not mess with the sources but identify them. A lot
of this depends on the ability of the recording software to handle
this. If a program (like TMG for example) can handle each event or
recording as a separate fact we don't have any problems but some
programs have room only for one name and everything is keyed to it. It
would make life difficult.
But basically we should listen to the sources as that is what someone
thought was the correct thing at the moment.
Fred
A lot of the people in my databases are from times and places when the
surnames changed with each generation. My Reunion software (Macintosh)
always asks me if I want to link the parent and child with the different
surnames, but all I have to do is click "link." Things become a little
more problematic when there are a variety of spellings for an individual's
name. I usually put all the spellings in the space and put slash marks
between them. That helps especially if I'm trying to go back to a record
using an electronic index that accepts only the spelling used in that
database. If things get too wild -- such as the 1870 census that spelled
my Finnigsmier as "Fenrumell" -- then I just make a note of it.
Marilyn