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DOUBLE LETTERS
Erdmann to Erdman
UMLAUTED VOWELS, ö ä ü
to Andofer (so it could be typed )
to Arndorfer (to more closely match the original pronunciation)
MUSHY CONSONANTS
Did they just say that with a t or a d? can't tell as it sounds halfway in-between, and their Germanic dialect does not match mine.
BUTCHERED
From Andöfer to Andover (thinking F sounds ALWAYS go with V spellings in German dialects)
ANGLICIZINGS
Elisabet, Elisabeth to Elizabeth
Catarinae, Catarina to Catherine to Katie
Frantz, Franz to Frank (any faith) or Francis (male, mostly Catholic)
Francesca to Frances (female, most Catholic)
Alexius, Alexandro to Alexander
Heinrich, Heinreich, Heine to Henry
Johannes, Johan, to John
Victore to Victoria to Dora
Rosalia to Rosa (often girls born with reddish tinged hair or brows, Bavarian??)
Leonard to Leo
Bernhard to Bernard to Barney
Mattias, Mattie to Matt, Matthew
Margarethe to Rita or Margaret
ESSAY-About Elizabeth. To track these families, from one parish to the next, it helps to understand how spellings changed over time. Her first name was spelled a German way that must have sounded lovely, Elisabeth, no "z", more like Alyssa than Eliza. Her maiden name is also spelled differently, multiple letters different, in baptismal records for her first two children, back at St. Boniface church in New Vienna, Iowa.
The changes over time are not random, but fit commonly seen patterns.
EXPLANATION. Germanic peoples who came to the States had to choose, first, between matching the spelling (still used by family back in the old country; what if they tried to send you a letter?), versus, secondly, encouraging strangers here in the states to pronounce the name almost correctly (auctioneers, when you were buying or selling livestock; Irish nuns, when reading your name off of class lists, etc.)
For her maiden name, pronunciation had won the battle with her offspring by the time we see Varnholdt. They've removed the original "two tiny dots over the vowel" in "Von" or "Van", and replaced that with its sound, so substitute an "ar". Before this point, printers here in the States could not typeset the pair of dots, called an umlaut. Thus, our manual typewriters did not have the double dots either. The early make-do strategy was to replace the "fancy o" with a "plain o", no "ar" at all. The dotted duo were dropped from printed prayer cards given out at funerals, from church bulletins giving parish news and calendar that listed wedding banns and feasts and dances, etc. Dropping the dots caused "sound it out" people to grossly mispronounce the beginning of this name, so adding the became the next solution.
There were issues with the ending, too. The transcriptions of older records from St. Boniface are the result of two things. First, typists making copies could not match the umlauts in the priests' script, burdened further by sometimes unclear, swirly or faded handwriting. Second, the priests themselves had to guess how to spell the particular German dialect used when a parent gave the family's lastname. Mushing together of similar consonants, using a sound halfway betweeen the two was common (example, with togue poised halfway between the t and d positions). This was true even in the varied Germanies back home. (There was no such thing as one Germany. Few spoke "schoolbook German", which was for reading, while a local dialect was used for speaking; a priest might come from a place speaking a different dialect.
You thus see her maiden name typed out as "Varnhold" and, later, "Vannolt" in the St. Boniface records of Catherine and Alexander. The parishioners named Erdmann must have lived very close to that church (or the priest made home visits?) as the baptismal dates are often within two days of the birth, and sometimes, on the same day
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