Since even the pronunciation of a surname like Reffell can vary, it is not surprising that it is often written incorrectly and/or transcribed in ways other than it should be. In searching idexes etc., it is worthwhile to also use ‘wildcards’ in any searches, e.g. ‘Reff*’ or ‘R?ff?ll’.
When deciphering difficult-to-read handwritten documents, a good tip is to try and identify how the vowels were written first. The capital letters can be looked at next, always try to find the same letter in other words that are not so difficult to read. Here are a number of examples taken from census returns.
The last letter is quite a bit lower than the one next to it and hence the transcriber though that the name was ‘Reffele’.
| The last letter is quite a bit lower than the one next to it and hence the transcriber thought that the name was ‘Reffele’. | |
| Here is the opposite to the one above, the second letter is much longer. However, this was transcribed as ‘Reffett’. | |
| This example was also transcribed as ‘Reffett’. It is actually ‘Peppitt’. | |
| It looks like this person is a ‘Raffell’ as transcribed, however he actually was a ‘Reffell’. A point worth noting is that ‘Will’ was short for William and was abbreviated by the enumerator as such, although this person was never called that in real life. | |
| This Reffell was transcribed as ‘Roffell’ as in older writing styles, ‘e’ was often written as ‘o’. | |
| This example is not strictly a transcription error, but has been included as an example of what the census enumerator thought that he had heard. It looks like Rebecca had a son called ‘Chiels’ & a daughter called ‘Ahama’ or ‘Abama’. Actually, they were Charles & Amelia. Perhaps Rebecca had a strong accent or a bad cold that day! |