12 February 2015

Chart Those Variants and Soundex Codes

Make a chart with all your variant spellings for a surname and their corresponding Soundex codes. You don't need the Soundex code to search, but the chart can be sorted by Soundex when preforming Soundex based searches so that you will know which searches locate what names so that you don't needlessly perform the same search.

After all, Trantvetter and Trontvetter have the same Soundex code. A Soundex search for Trantvetter will find Trontvetter.

3 comments:

  1. It took me a while to realize that the soundex code was different for the variants of the name I was searching for. This was some time ago -- most folks now days give you a blank stare when you mention soundex!

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  2. I just learned that today in reading this post. How do I access Soundex on Websites like Ancestry.com? Thanks, Jane

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  3. Ancestry.com doesn't have a page (that I know of) to give you the codes. You can get the codes here to get the numbers like those used in the post http://resources.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/soundexconverter

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