One of the most common problems during genealogy research is the identification of the person being sought.
There is not a single genealogy that has not encountered this problem. As a rule, this is manifested as follows: the coincidence of the dates (years) of the birth of the same person, the misinterpretation of surnames, names and patronymics or their severe distortion.
Different birth dates (very often, years) for the same person for various types of documents is quite common. One of the reasons for this may be the difference in writing dates with the old and new style (13 days difference), another reason can be described as a commonplace mistake of the person who recorded it, this happens very often in our days. Also, the cause of the mismatch of birth dates (marriages and deaths) can be a deliberate distortion of age by your ancestor, there are an infinite number of reasons for this, from banal evasion of military service (or vice versa, the desire to get into the army faster) and to receive various benefits, pensions, allowances etc. Sometimes, a person intentionally lowers his passport age to be considered younger, although now it is quite problematic to do this.
As practice shows, the age difference for different archival documents of the same person can be even 7 years or more, and this is the norm in documents of the 19th – early 20th centuries.
Surnames and names in the 19th century didn’t have such stability as in the second half of the 20th century, therefore very often in archival documents the surname of the same person (or people with direct family ties) could change almost beyond recognition. A real example from practice: during a study of one peasant family, at the end of the XVII century. bore the name Fesenko, it turns out that in the first half of the nineteenth century. representatives of the same genus began to be recorded as Fomenko (Khomenko), and starting from the second half of the 19th century Fesenko again.
Another real life example: a person born in the middle of the 19th century. at baptism was recorded as Eleazar, in subsequent documents (confessional paintings) he is referred to as Nazar, Zotik and again Eleazar.
Separately, it is worth noting the grammar of writing documents in the first years after the 1917 revolution in Ukraine. Most of the documentation during this period was conducted in Ukrainian, which differs significantly with modern spelling rules. So, for example, the name Fedor (by the way in the church records – Theodore) could be written as Fedka (Fedya, Fed, Khvedir, Khved), the name Athanasius as Panas (Tanas), etc.
In the end, I would like to repeat once again that all changes in names, surnames, disagreements with age are the norm for documents of the 19th – early 20th centuries. Even now in the XXI century. Errors in official documents have a place to be.
Source: beket.com.ua
Good luck in finding.
