Person talk:Sijtze Zijlstra (3)

Selected Spelling during Merge [29 August 2010]

When I merged 2 records, I picked the spelling Sijtze rather than Sytze, partly to be consistent with the spelling of the surname. My understanding is that 'ij' is not uncommon in Dutch names, although it is also often replaced by 'y' - I'm not sure if this is an error arising from an inability to decipher handwritten records, or if it is a legitimate alternative to 'ij' in Dutch names (I've seen one of my ancestors as both Gysbert and Gijsbert). I notice that his father's patronymic is spelled Sytses - presumably it is the same name, and possibly should also be with 'ij'. --DataAnalyst 20:14, 29 August 2010 (EDT)

From what I understand, ij is the more accurate version. When you look at the actual documents, they are written quite like a y with 2 dots above. However, the archives decided to simplify their indexes and changed most of the ij's to y. As AlleFriezen says, "in our database names with a ‘ij’ are often written with a ‘y’ to restrict the number of variants". These duplicates here were a merge of my older research that went by the index and newer research since the actual scanned documents were made public. So... you chose the correct variant! --Jennifer (JBS66) 20:35, 29 August 2010 (EDT)