The dangers of dating

On an apparently abandoned corner of the web, in the archives of a discontinued newsletter, I found this delightful story about the dangers of dating from secondary sources (tombstones, in this case). Not specific to Dutch genealogy, but certainly worth reading.

Maiden names

In most English-speaking countries, a woman generally takes her husband's surname after marriage. In The Netherlands (and several other European countries), a married woman may use her husband's surname, and be known to everyone in her environment under her husband's name, but she will never get this name. On all official documents, her own surname is used.

This is also true for old church books. In 18th century baptism books, the mother will (nearly always) be recorded with her own surname. If there were female witnesses, they will be listed under their own surnames.

This means, of course, that knowing the maiden names of your female Dutch ancestors is even more important than knowing the maiden names of your female American ancestors. In practice, this is rarely a problem, as every document you find will list it. If you know anything at all about a female ancestor, you will at least know her maiden name.

Timezones

In my previous post I explained how to interpret times in Dutch acts. Those times were usually local times. That sounds obvious, but local time was really local - every place could have its own time.

In the 18th century, time calculation was usually based on the sun - noon is when the sun is at its peak. With this system, there is a one minute time difference when you travel 17 km (10.5 miles) east or west.

There were some changes in the time calculation after the 1830s (like the introduction of mean time), but every town kept its own time throughout the 19th century. To make matters worse, the railway companies introduced their own time, as they could not handle the different times at each station very well. Towns and cities with a railway station now had two times: local time and railway time. Railway time was equal to Amsterdam mean time (AMT).

Time zones, based on Greenwich mean time (GMT) were introduced in the U.S.A. in 1884, and in Europe in 1892. Neighbouring countries Belgium and England used GMT, Germany used central European time (CET, with a one hour offset to GMT), and in The Netherlands a discussion on the introduction of time zones started. In the mean time, the railway time changed to GMT, some towns followed the railway time, some towns used AMT, some towns used local time, and in most places at least two times were in use.

The discussions and confusion finally ended in 1909, when AMT became the official national time.

Amsterdam mean time was 19 minutes and 32 seconds ahead of Greenwich mean time. In 1937, the time was adjusted by 28 seconds to achieve a twenty minute offset to GMT.

CET was enforced by Germany in 1940, during the German occupation of The Netherlands in the second world war. It is still in use today.

Times in Dutch acts

Dutch acts usually contain the time of birth, death or marriage. In the 19th and early 20th century, times were usually rounded to the nearest half hour, and written in the 12-hour notation. After that, times became more precise, and the 24-hour notation was used.

Whole hours are easy to understand, you only need to know the first twelve numerals: één (or een), twee, drie, vier, vijf, zes, zeven, acht (in older acts also agt), negen, tien, elf, twaalf. You can also find these numerals in any Dutch dictionary, or in the Dutch genealogy dictionary. The time will often be written as om .. uur, ten .. uur or ten .. ure: om zes uur, ten zes ure , at six o'clock.

Half hours will have the word half before the numeral of the next hour, and the word uur is sometimes dropped. So om half zes and ten half zes uur (litt. half six) both mean at half past five, and not at half past six!

Modifiers used to distinguish between a.m. and p.m. can be voor de middag, des voormiddags, des voordemiddags (litt. before midday) for a.m., and na de middag, des namiddags, des nademiddags (litt. after midday) for p.m., or they contain the part of day: des nachts (at night), des ochtends or des morgens (in the morning), des middags (in the afternoon), des avonds (in the evening). The prefix des is occasionally (in modern Dutch usually) abbreviated to 's.

Some examples:

des middags ten twaalf uur	noon
des morgens ten negen uur	9 a.m.
des namiddags ten acht ure	8 p.m.
des namiddags te half drie ure	2:30 p.m.

Same-Named Siblings

In his Genealogue blog, Mr. Dunham comments on the "ridiculous" case (not his qualification, I hasten to add) of two Jamaican siblings having the same Christian names and surnames. Maybe we Dutch are a ridiculous people, but having same-named siblings was quite common over here. Not only were the names of deceased children reused, but children that survived into adulthood may well have shared the same name. Children are traditionally named after relatives. The first two boys will have their grandfathers' names, the first two girls their grandmothers', other children will be named after parents, aunts, uncles, and great-grandparents. If both grandmothers were named Johanna, there may well have been two daughters named Johanna. In practice, same-named children will have had different nicknames that they used instead of their given names. I am not aware of any currently living siblings with the same name, and also the habit of reusing names of deceased children has almost completely disappeared.

ij or y

From the August issue of Trace your Dutch roots: The letter combination ij is very common in Dutch names (and in Dutch words in general) - so common that Dutch typewriters and keyboards have a separate key for ij. In older, handwritten, documents ij and y are often used interchangeably. ij still has a special status in the Dutch alphabet. It is sometimes treated as a single letter, sometimes not. Dictionaries sort words containing ij as you would expect, but some phone books sort ij as if it were y. Occasionally, you may find the ij sorted just before (or just after) the y. If a name starts with ij, both letters are capitalized: IJsbrand, van den IJssel. Dutch immigrants in the US often replaced ij in their name with y. So if you can't find your de Rooy ancestors in Genlias, it could be because they were listed as de Rooij.