Wild-cards are a geneal*gist’s b*st fr*nd

Wild-cards, – usually an asterisk (‘*’) representing any series of characters and a question-mark representing a single character – are one of the most important (and under-appreciated) tools in any online researcher’s toolkit. The garbled English versions of original Irish-language surnames and placenames we work with in Ireland make them doubly important. Here are a few hard-earned lessons.

All surname variant systems are flawed. Try searching for Callaghan on Rootsireland and you’ll get a faceful of Gallaghers. FindMyPast appears to think all surnames starting  “O'” are variants of each other. And years back I came across a Brien recorded as Breen and made them variants of each other. Which they’re not really.

So you should never rely completely on any site’s built-in variants system. The best – IrishGenealogy and FamilySearch come to mind – allow maximum flexibility, running all the way from  returning all variants of any name matched anywhere in the search, through all wild-carded versions of both forename and surname, to exact matches only. At the other end of the spectrum, AskAboutIreland’s Griffith’s search will just put invisible wild-cards around the surname if you tick the “similar names” box. And in between come:

  • genealogy.nationalarchives.ie: no variants, but wild-cards you can sprinkle like snuff at a wake;
  • Ancestry:  no wild-cards and a very peculiar variants system;
  • Rootsireland: wild-cards (“%” and “_”) only in the placename field when searching a local centre’s records, but a generally good surname and forename variants system.

Most sites that allow wild-cards have restrictions. For example, a search with a wild-card as initial letter is usually verboten, because of the strain it puts on the server. Not me. I proudly strain my CPU in your service – *or?m Most also specify a minimum number of characters. Again, not me.

So, for example, ‘B*urk*’ will find Bourk, Bourke, Burk, Burkett …  Remember that consonants tend to be more stable than vowels. Very often simply replacing all the vowels in a search term with asterisks will provide a useful list of candidate results.

Above all, experiment with wild cards. Would you like to see all Rootsireland baptisms in Carndonagh between 1865 and 1875 with a godmother called Mary? No problem:

Note the redundant “Surname required” warning

7 thoughts on “Wild-cards are a geneal*gist’s b*st fr*nd”

  1. I do love wildcards. You can actually use the % wildcard on the Roots Ireland website for first names but not surnames. I always used the % wildcard for the name Bridget (Br%g%) when searching on Roots Ireland to cover both Bridget and Brigid. They’re useful for names like Thomas and Patrick too if the nickname was recorded. The wildcard is very useful for place names since they can vary a lot.

  2. Whether Breen is or is not a variant of (O)Brien, it is very easy for a handwritten “i” to be mistranscribed as “e”.

    1. It is a variant of O’Brien, as Breen is simple the anglicized spelling of the Irish spelling “Ó Briain” (pronounced Oh-Breen)

  3. While I agree that some systems could be better, it is not accurate to say that Ancestry dot com has no wildcards. From the Ancestry website –
    Quote
    Wildcards are special symbols which are used in place of letters or numbers. They can be used to match distinct but similar words. An asterisk “*” replaces zero or more characters, and a question mark “?” replaces exactly one character. For example, a search for “fran*” will return matches on words like “Fran,” “Franny,” or “Frank.” A search for “Johns?n” matches “Johnson” and “Johnsen,” but not “Johnston.”

    Here are some suggestions on how you can better use wildcards to complete your search:

    Use more characters before the wildcard.
    For example, use “Able*” instead of “Abl*”
    Specify both a first and last name or a partial first and last name.
    Try using the single-character wildcard “?” rather than the multiple-character wildcard “*”.
    For example, using “Hans?n” matches both “Hansen” and “Hanson” rather than using “Hans*”
    Either the first or last character must be a non-wildcard character.
    For example, “Han*” and “*son” are okay, but not “*anso*”
    Names must contain at least three non-wildcard characters.
    For example, “Ha*n” is okay, but not “Ha*”

    End Quote
    https://support.ancestry.com/s/article/Searching-with-Wild-Cards

    1. I would agree with the statement that Wildcards can be used on Ancestry, but the search engine already returns too many unassociated results. Even limiting to a specific spelling seems to either return NO results or Numerous Results with names that aren’t even close. Limiting to the State still returns results from various states.

      Ancestry’s search engine sometimes seems to use it’s own parameters. That said, I have been an Ancestry Customer for a long time. I have not found another system that makes it so easy to add documents and/or people to my tree, so foresee remaining a customer for a long time to come. I just wish the Search Engine could be a little more precise.

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