hannover-l - Nachricht 2007-06 00189

[M. Holtel <mholtel(a)gmx.net>]

hannover-l-request(a)genealogy.net schrieb:

> > 3) How is the letter "ÿ" pronounced? Why write Meÿer rather than Meyer?

Hello,

"ÿ" is nothing else than "y", it's only the way of writing this
character, it's just another font. Alike you will see a "u" with a line
upon it in old German fonts, and it means nothing else than "u".

There's a difference to the Dutch: The "ÿ" is sometimes used for the
combination "ij".

> > 4) Why is it that surnames are often spelled differently for women and 
> > men
> > of the same family; specifically, why is an "s" often added for women? Is
> > there a genealogical convention in dealing with this?

I have never seen something like that in my documents...

The only thing I can imagine is that the (non-academic?) pastors may
have used spoken German. In "Plattdeutsch" (language spoken Northern
Germany) they often used the genitive to indicate a person: "Tibben
Heinz" (written in English: Tibbe's Heinz) instead of "Heinz Tibbe".
That's not depending on the gender - but perhaps in former times, it was...

Regards
Markus