Re: Need suggestions for how to search for misspelled family names #records
Mashiach L. Bjorklund
Wildcard searchingIt’s important to remember that names are often misspelled or mis-transcribed, so doing “fuzzy” searching on names can often help you find a good match, even though the name may look wrong. In the name and keyword fields, you can do extremely fuzzy searches by using wildcards. Wildcards are special symbols (the asterisk "*" and the question mark "?") that are used in searching to represent some number of unknown letters in a word. Wildcards can be effective search tools if you are searching for words or names with alternate spellings: An asterisk "*" represents zero or more characters (e.g., a search for "john*" might return "john, johnson, johnsen, johnathon, johns", etc.).
I clipped that from Ancestry.com. It's a good description of how to use wild card searching. It also helps to understand soundex and how the database you are using applies it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundex If you have an Ancestry.com account try this link: https://support.ancestry.com/s/article/Searching-with-Soundex Mash Bjorklund Clearwater, FL
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