Hasselbacher Family Blog

I have already lost the sense of name permanence as I learned to dig in old family history. I have enough personal experience now with old church and immigration records to know that there was a certain amount of creative spelling and name evolution. Specifically, as I looked early-on for places named Hasselbach from which Hasselbachers might spring, I did not know what to make about the significance s, ss, or ß in my name. (I still do not fully understand, but I no longer worry about it.) There is a however, a certain amount of non-randomness in the geographic variation of the spelling. The old scientist in me wants to find meaning in non-random events so I continue to investigate.

For example, if one enters place names into Goggle’s Map function for Germany, there are 9 Haselbach locations and 8 Hasselbach locations. However, if one enters the same names for sites in Austria, there are 10 Haselbach locations and no Hasselbach ones! I did not have to dig out my old statistics book to tell that this was not a random variation. (more…)

If you have a name like Hasselbacher or something close, you no doubt have heard many pronunciations, seen many misspellings, and have developed your own method of helping people over the phone. This problem has probably been with us forever, and was accentuated when our ancestors were funneled through the ports of America and into its workplaces. Some of us chose, or had chosen for us, new ways of spelling or pronouncing our names. (more…)