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Overview

The story goes that two out-of-towners were having an argument over spelling. One said "Its Hawaii". Another said "Its Havaii". So they turned to a local and asked how the place should be spelt. "Havaii!" said she confidently. "Thank you" said they. "You're velcome" she replied.

One of the greates problem in genealogical research is knowing how something is spelt, be it the name of a shtetl or the name of a person. A name written in Russian or Yiddish (i.e. using the Cyrillic or Hebrew character set, respectively) was 'converted' (i.e. transliterated) to the Latin character set (the letters 'a', 'b', 'c', 'd'...), but often only to the closest possible version.

Thus a name which spelled in Yiddish as "zayin nun daled lamed" could be written as Zendle, Zendel, Zindel, Zendell, etc. Even those names which we would think were absolute, like Cohen, could become Coen, Cowan, Cohan, Cone, Kon, Kohn, Kaan... and that's without all the errors in transliteration that might have been made, or errors made because of poor handwriting.

So the problem that researchers face is that they cannot rely upon a simple narrow "exact spelling" search for a name. They need a means of performing searches that will allow for the variations in nomenclature mentioned above.

One of the solutions is through the use of the Soundex or "sounds like" system of indexing text. The phonetic sound of names is coded, and the researcher can use the resulting code to find all the names that correspond to a particular code.

If you want to read a technical description of how the system works, then please be our guest.

What follows is an abstract from that document:

The basic principles

With soundex, the "sound" of names -- the phonetic sound, to be exact -- is coded.

By coded, we mean given a number.

For example, the names 'Scherman', 'Schurman', 'Sherman', 'Shireman', 'Shurman' and 'Szerman' are all indexed together as NARA Soundex code 'S655', because they all sound similar.

If you want to convert names to Soundex Codes, you can use the JewishGen JOS Soundex calculator at https://www.jewishgen.org/jos.

Russell Soundex Coding (NARA)

Is used by the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.

In the 1930s, Soundex indexes were created for the 1880, 1900, 1910 (partial), 1920 and 1930 (partial) US Federal censuses. The Soundex information was copied onto file cards, and filed by state. These soundex indexes are available on microfilm at all NARA branches.

For additional Russell soundex information see The Source, A Guidebook of American Genealogy, by Arlene Eackle and Johni Cerny.

Daitch-Mokotoff Coding

The Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex System was created by Randy Daitch and Gary Mokotoff because they concluded the system developed by Robert Russell in 1918, and in use today by the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) does not apply well to many Slavic and Yiddish surnames. It also includes refinements that are independent of ethnic considerations.

For additional D-M soundex information, see Where Once We Walked by Mokotoff and Sack.

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Authors: Warren Blatt, Michael Tobias, Carol Skydell, Iris Folkson, Susan King, Tony Zendle.
Version 2.04   Last Updated: May 1, 2004   WSB