The Formidable Genealogist

The Formidable Genealogist 🌳Professional Genealogist🌳
I’m Jen & my rate is $200/hr. Only 2 hr minimum. I also write research guides to help you research like I do.

https://www.theformidablegenealogist.com/category/all-products Hi, I'm Jen and I like to keep it very simple and transparent. If you're here, you're interested in family history, which happens to be my full-time job and full-time passion. I love being a small business owner and am ecstatic to be doing my dream job every day.

I had about 20 people asking me overnight how to see specific episodes of my longer format series, The Formidable Geneal...
04/22/2026

I had about 20 people asking me overnight how to see specific episodes of my longer format series, The Formidable Genealogist Studio.

YouTube will be the easiest place to see them. I post the full episodes on Facebook, as well, but they're not as organized to find there. On YouTube, they're a specific playlist where you'll find them in order. Subscribe over there so you don't miss them.

https://www.youtube.com//playlists

04/21/2026

21 Apr 2026 When other people have wrong info in their family trees.

I get many questions from people trying to research their Syrian and Lebanese ancestors. I recommend getting involved wi...
04/21/2026

I get many questions from people trying to research their Syrian and Lebanese ancestors. I recommend getting involved with the National Society for Arab & Arab American Genealogy. They even have a conference coming up this weekend.

https://arabamericangenealogy.com/events/

Episode 7 of The Formidable Genealogist Studio is coming out tomorrow. In this episode, I'll be talking about how you ca...
04/21/2026

Episode 7 of The Formidable Genealogist Studio is coming out tomorrow. In this episode, I'll be talking about how you can prove or disprove those family legends. I'll give you some practical tips for picking it apart.

Subscribe on YouTube at the link below:
https://www.youtube.com/

04/20/2026

20 Apr 2026 Linked vs unlinked results in an Ancestry tree

04/19/2026

19 Apr 2026 Episode 6 of The Formidable Genealogist Studio is short, so I’m posting it here. Full series including longer episodes on YouTube.

Walder and Walter are the same name, genealogically speaking.When a surname is transliterated or translated or spelled d...
04/19/2026

Walder and Walter are the same name, genealogically speaking.

When a surname is transliterated or translated or spelled differently, that is not a “name change.” It is the same name written in a different alphabet or spelling system.

Михайлов becomes Mikhailov. Müller becomes Mueller. Giovanni becomes John.

Nobody changed who they were. Ellis Island officials and interpreters (stop with that myth of no one being able to understand your ancestor) just wrote the name in a way English speakers could read, pronounce, or type.

Calling that a different name is like saying Robert and Roberto are completely unrelated people, or that your phone changed your identity because it removed the accent mark from your last name.

The language changed. The person did not. And they could use whatever name they wanted, the moment they left Ellis Island.

This is exactly why the Ellis Island name-change story falls apart.Even if an immigration clerk had written a name diffe...
04/19/2026

This is exactly why the Ellis Island name-change story falls apart.

Even if an immigration clerk had written a name differently, then what? Was there a Name Police waiting at the train station in Chicago to arrest your ancestor if he kept using his real surname?

Of course not.

Passenger manifests, census records, and immigration papers did not have the power to permanently rename anyone. Your ancestor could use whatever version of the name he wanted: the original spelling, a phonetic spelling, an Americanized version, or three different versions at once.

The reason we see so many different spellings is not because Ellis Island “changed” them. It is because spelling was flexible, names were often transliterated or Americanized, and there was no single “official” spelling to begin with.

A clerk with bad handwriting is not a wizard. He cannot wave a pencil and rename your entire bloodline.

I'm also getting this myth a lot in my comment section. If a census enumerator misspelled your family name, that did not...
04/19/2026

I'm also getting this myth a lot in my comment section. If a census enumerator misspelled your family name, that did not magically become your new legal identity forever.

That is like a hotel clerk typing your last name wrong on a reservation and you deciding, “Well, I guess we are the Rossows now.”

Census takers wrote names phonetically. Russo might become Ruso, Rossow, or Rosso depending on what they heard, not concerned with spelling.

And your ancestor never even saw the census page. The enumerator wrote it down and the family went on with their lives.

Nobody rushed after him shouting, “Wait! You forgot an S!”

In the 19th and early 20th centuries there usually was no single “official” spelling of a surname anyway. The idea that there was one correct, legal version of your last name is mostly a modern one. Typically from the late 1930s in the US at the start of Social Security.

My comment section is full of the 3 brothers myth. The story goes that three brothers arrived at Ellis Island and each w...
04/19/2026

My comment section is full of the 3 brothers myth.

The story goes that three brothers arrived at Ellis Island and each was given a different spelling of the family surname and forced to use it forever.

That is a myth.

The real reason you may find three brothers using three different spellings is that, at the time, spelling was often phonetic and there was no single “legal” version of a surname. One brother might write Esposito, another Spositoe, and another Espozito—and all three could appear in records for the same family. They're all the same name.

That is no different than your phone autocorrecting your last name three different ways in three different text messages. The typo exists only in that one record. It does not become your new identity.

The variation came from the family and the records after Ellis Island as they navigated their new country.

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