Name variants now switched on
We are happy to tell you that we have now applied changes to the data on 1911 Census to allow you to search for variants for both first names and last names.
The variants search is essentially a large thesaurus that identifies common variants, mis-spellings and alternative spellings for many of the names within the census. This should be of great help in tracking down elusive ancestors that you have so far not been able to identify.
Click on the “Show advanced fields” button to make use of this search feature.
Coming next: allow a wildcard as the first character, increase range of years available (currently set at a maximum of +/- 2 years).
Enjoy!
Tags: alternative, mis-spelling, Search, variants
February 5th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
Unfortunately, you seem to have “switched off” the facility to use a comma in a surname field with place, and other members of household fields filled in. This is a huge nuisance. How can one check an index entry without proper search facilities?
February 5th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
@Jay: we’re sorry we had to do this, but it was never part of the official functionality (which is why you won’t see any mention of this facility on the site anywhere or any help files related to it).
Unfortunately, it was being abused by a number of users who were using it in conjunction with a “hack” to attempt to avoid paying for transcripts. Thus we had to disable it.
We’re sorry that the actions of a few have inconvenienced the majority and we will look at other ways of making the search more flexible in due course.
February 8th, 2009 at 12:44 am
It would be really helpful to have wildcard search in the birth place window, as this is most often victim to spelling errors and typo’s.
Thanks