your worst/funniest mis-transcriptions

[petere]

Oooops. I have just found the answer myself.   

Peter

[bel_jon68]

I spent a LOT of time trying to find my great- grandfather's brother Hamlin (and I thought it was a lovely name, too, though rather unusual for a Welsh family).  When I eventually got a decent copy of the census returns, it turned out he was in fact Llywelin Rees...

Bel

[Cell]

Has anyone else  noticed that Ancestry has this huge  amount of people below ,who were born in England Somalia?

Census Records  37,989  matches    | info 
  1901 England Census  27,797     
  1891 England Census  10,145     



They have  transcribed  a lot of the the "SOM" birthplaces from the images  as Somalia, and not Somerset.

Birthplace:
Bristol Somalia Daughter 
 Bath Somalia Wife
 Bath  Somalia Head  Bristol 

Go to the census, drop down menu "where did they live" put in England . You don't have to put a name in for the person, leave that blank, and just type in Somalia as keyword. And you will have this list of people being born in Bath and other Somerset regions as being born in Somalia

So if you can't find any of your rellies who were born in Somerset, fear not,  try typing in  "Somalia" for the  birth place , you may just  find them

[minime]

My step-mom noticed that some relatives on my Dad's side were listed as born in Va. (Virginia) instead of Ve. (Vermont). She banged her head against the computer screen for months on that one.

Minime

[Ros Fornaro]

I have Horsley, Gloucestershire transcribed as Savosley! 

Ros Fornaro

[7igerby7he7ail]

I had an ancestor down [in the IGI] as 'FLANAKIN'.Then searched for the 'originals' that too was FLANAKIN, the father of the said FLANAKIN turned out to be FLANAGAN, a church scribe mis-hearing the Irish brogue perhaps?
It took me five years to find that out.

A funny one in a PR
Jacob---------- farted from this life on the third day of October-------.

[Biker]

Found my Freiensener family at last on the 1871 census.  Why did it take so long?  In 1901/1891/1881 the name is transcribed correctly on the census.  On the 1871 they are listed as Francini.  So, not only completely wrong, but a nationality change from German to Italian overnight   

Glad I found them anyway.

Jonathan

[Jane Masri]

  Oh dear, I've gotta come clean on this one.  I eagerly transcribed an ancestors will as ' James Bravery of Elba'.  Ummm, so I spent ages looking for a place called Elba in deepest Surrey.  Even came up with a wonderful theory that this was a name given to a house/farm by a gent  fresh back from doing his Grand Tour in the nineteenth century.  Wellllll, come on, sounds plausable
Having nearly torn my hair out trying finding this elusive Elba, I sent the offending will to 'One Who Knows', in Surrey, to find out that it wasn't Elba after all, but read, James Bravery the Elder
Didn't feel too bad though, as I had shown it to the librarian at the Surrey History Centre and he read it as Elba too!
Jane

[Keith Sherwood]

For ages I was puzzled by the row of dwellings transcribed as TONIN'S Cottages, Camden, on the L.D.S. 1881 Census on the internet.  Then I realised from a marriage certificate of my WHITE family that the address was supposed to be TORRIANO Cottages, which I eventually visited with my digital camera after stepping out of the Tube at Kentish Town the other day.
I think the problem is sometimes with the cursive handwriting being misinterpreted, for another example is on the death certificate of my gt-grandmother's first husband, who died on Tenerife in 1903.  His death was reported by an Ernest CHIN, who actually turned out to be an Ernest UREN.
Keith