Kathryn Farrel of Massachusetts writes:
"Dear John,
......The other thing I wanted to tell you about was a book I'm reading entitled:
"Surnames and Genealogy: A New Approach" by George Redmonds
pub: New England Historic Genealogical Society, Boston 1997
Although most of the examples come from Yorkshire records, the author
states that a lot of the patterns apply to other English speaking regions.
In the sections devoted to aliases and by-names, he gives multiple
examples of how the same person or members of the family will appear
in the records sometimes with the family name, and other times with
the alias. If you don't know the connection, then you would not
logically associate one name with the other. His premise is that
many times when a record cannot be found, it is because it is often
recorded under the alias.
Liz Newbury of Cornwall writes:
This subject often crops up on this list so here are some answers:
"Entries for illegitimate children in parish registers before 1813 normally name
only the mother. They often contain an additional term of disapprobation of the
child, such as 'base', 'bastard', 'B', 'byeblow', 'chanceling', 'filius/filia',
'unmulierly begotten', 'populi/vulgi/terrae/,eretrocos', 'illegal', 'lamebegot',
'lovebegot', 'merrybegot', 'nothus', 'spurius', 'viciatus', 'scapegoat',
'uniuscuiusque', and even 'dratsab'. Sometimes it is the mother who is
implicitly blamed by being referred to as 'fornicator', 'adulterer' or 'harlot'.
It is not uncommon for the name of the reputed (or 'supposed') father or fathers
to be given also, especially after an Act of 1634 which required the recording
of the names of both parents at baptism. In the seventeenth century an
illegitimate child might carry an 'alias' in his or her surname when an adult, a
practice which survived into the nineteenth century. Thus John Smith alias
Jones would have a father and mother who were not married to each other, one
called Smith and the other Jones. John Smith alias Jones might then grow up,
marry and have children who themselves would carry the surname Smith alias
Jones, and occasionally so might their children. (The sins of the
grandfather!!!)There seems to have been no strongly applied convention that one
or the other should come first. In more modern times illegitimacy has been the
origin of some hyphenated surnames.
An alias, often abbreviated to 'als' in the registers did not always denote
illegitimacy, however. It has also been used on marriage, or on the remarriage
of a widow to denote 'formerly'; to recognise changes of name, including some
following immigration; to signify a common-law marriage; to differentiate
between different holders of common surnames; to acknowledge a personal
inheritance from outside the family; and to indicate stepchildren or fostered
children, often in order to preserve rights inherited from their birth family;
occasionally, to indicate an occupation; or to indicate a commonly used nickname
or occupational name for the individual concerned. There are many aliases which
suggests that Roman Catholics were in the habit of using them for security
during their years of persecution. Discovering the reason for an alias is not
straigntforward and each case has to be treated on its merits. Even where
illegitimacy was the cause, there is no rule for whether the father's or the
mother's name was given first, and there are cases in which the individuals
changed them round on different occasions."
Here endeth an abridged extraction from The Family Tree Detective by Colin D.
Rogers.
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