N-Swedish Patronymic and Common Name

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Myss Story on August 17, 2009 at 11:44pm

math has never been my strong suit! I apologize for the error in the area of Vastergotland. I was trying to understand how close each of the provinces were to each other, since I noticed the name I am researching seems to be found in several adjoining provinces.

I do not know specifically where the Swedish relative was born, and I must learn the geography to understand the probable origins.

Thank you for the correction so others will know.

Permalink Reply by Lynn Anderson on August 19, 2009 at 12:59am

While it may be nice to know that a person came from landskap (province) Västergötland it is the county Skaraborgs län which is involved with record keeping. You need to get from the län down to the parish where the actual documents were created. Any reasonable book on Swedish genealogy will have maps of län and landskap. Try google but use the Swedish characters (copy them from this message if you cannot set up the keyboard on your computer.

In the thread above note someone said both Götland and Gotland. They are not the same! Gotland is a major island, a landskap and a län. Västergötland and Östergötland (west and east Götland) are not counties and are on the mainland. They are also pronounced differently than Gotland. Thsi is why it is important to use the Swedish letters when they are known.

Along the same topic, the second biggest city in Sweden is Göteborg in Swedish which would be found at the end of the "g" category. In English we call it Gothenburg which

Permalink Reply by Annelie Jonsson on August 19, 2009 at 2:36am

Have made two groups here at GenealogyWise:
One for Skaraborg Co and one for Älvsborg County. Which are two of the former län in Västergötland. The city Göteborg belonged to Göteborg's and Bohus län, not yet up.

The area the groups cover are narrowed down. By this I hope it become easier to make queries and get information in the specific area/parish you are looking for.

Permalink Reply by Myss Story on August 21, 2009 at 1:58pm

I apologize for not using umlauts and other grammatical punctuation for the Swedish twords. I recognize they are significant, but I do not speak or read Swedish and I will have to write in a word processor to embed the correct character. I think that may be a similar difficulty for beginners in Swedish research particulary from U.S.A where by the 3rd or 4th generation much old country ways were left behind.

Regarding the places suggested, unfortunately for me, I really do not know if these are the places I will find my Swedish ancestor in. Until I can locate him, I will have to stay in the N folder. I was going by a passenger list that specifically was from England to New York so the place of "previous residence" was listed in English -as the ship was in England's port of Liverpool, as "Gothenburg" for Amanda Nilsson and her son Henning, family of Johan Alfred Nilsson. It may be that is where she was born, but it doesnt tell me what parish or other administrative designations, so I am a little bit lost.

Permalink Reply by Lynn Anderson on August 23, 2009 at 10:28am

Myss Story -- please dont apologize for not using the Swedish letters but if you have the information it can be very helpful in finding people and especially places.

If you are using a Windows-based computer, you can load an auxiary keyboard for Swedish and simply switch back and forth at will with just a click. To do this, go to Control Panel, then keyboards. Depending on your Windows version, you may have to insert the Windows disk for a minute. I like to set the switch for the task bar. Down near the lower right of your screen you will see a EN appear. If you click on it you will see a list of the language keyboards you have loaded. Click on SV for Swedish and EN for English.

The three additional letters are Öö right of L Ää 2nd key to right of L and Åå one key right of P. [these replace ;: "' and {] Note that special characters like () are NOT where they are on the US English keyboard. Best to switch back.

Why + the Swedish letters appear sorted to the END of the alphabet. For example Ö is after Z not after N! When you look in sorted lists you might miss what you are looking for. Also, when searching Swedish-language sites it might show nothing depending how flexible the search engine is. (Yes, sometimes in these notes I dont bother shame on me)

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