Re: CZEZNAK, Torgeny
-
In reply to:
Re: CZEZNAK, Torgeny
Sheri 3/18/09
Ship manifests were compiled in the countries where the ports of departure where located. Therefore the clerks were not trying to convert a foreign name into somthing similar in English. The only time names got scrambled was when a passenger had documents written in some language that used the Cyrillic alphabet. These names had to be transliterated.
Considerable errors occured when Ellis Island's manifests were digitized for the web site. A majority of immigrants came thru' German ports where German clerks wrote in a German script that was considerably different than what we use.