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General Research February 9, 2012

(Humor) The Viceneck case solved: German genealogy phonetic oddity

Written by Karl-Michael Sala

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Since 1979, THOUSANDS of data, documents & images for THOUSANDS of ancestral family members for HUNDREDS of clients' ancestral family members have been found by The German Genealogist!

After THOUSANDS of hours of German Genealogy research, in 1984, Karl-Michael Sala was accredited as a German Genealogist by the Family History Library of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. After more than a decade of absolutely stunning successes for his clients, Karl was run into by a drunk pick-up truck driver. This 1995 near-death experience ultimately caused that his accreditation was involuntarily pulled. This was to protect the name of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. However, since '95, along with Karl's recovery, Karl has had more success than ever for clients, patrons, himself & his living family members!

Since 1980, Karl has traveled 7 times behind the former Iron Curtain to East Germany to successfully exhaust hundreds of parish registers of the target ancestral family members.

Karl is a former USAFR Intelligence Officer who earned a Deserving Airman Commission while he had been serving as an Intelligence Operations Specialist & Linguist (German), Interrogator, Debriefer (non-commissioned officer at that time)

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Indeed, Karl-Michael Sala is a Master German Genealogist!

Once Upon A Time…

Here is a humorous account found in the FamilySearch German Wiki: Phonetic Spellings

“When a phonetic spelling of a place name is given, it can mislead the researcher to the extent that it is impossible to proceed with the research on a certain ancestral line. Gerhard Jeske, retired reference consultant at the Family History Library once recounted an interesting account of a perplexing place name problem brought to the library by a German patron. It shows how misleading a phonetic spelling can be.

Some time ago a patron came to the Family History Library with a German research problem and asked a reference consultant for assistance. The problem was to find records of a place in Germany by the name of “Viceneck.” When the reference consultant looked at the given spelling of this place name, he knew immediately that this was a phonetic spelling. He was sure that a place with such spelling would not be listed in any of the German gazetteers, but he checked the gazetteers anyway to satisfy the patron.

After the gazetteers had been searched without being successful in finding this place, the reference consultant began to analyze the problem to determine what the German spelling for this place could be. Viceneck is not a Germany spelling but a phonetic American spelling. The German spelling could be Weisneck, Weissneck, Weisnek, Weissnek, Weisseneck, Weissenek, Weisnick, Weissnick, Weisnik, Weissnik, Weisnich, Weissnich, etc.

The reference consultant then check the gazetteers for many different spellings but could not find any of them, and he realized that such place does not exist. He wanted to get a clue and find out what was wrong with the spelling of this place name in order to help the patron with this research problem. The consultant asked the patron how the spelling of this place name was obtained and who had given the name to the patron. He was informed that the name of the place was given by word of mouth by a living relative from Germany who did not speak English too well.
When the patron asked this relative where his ancestor was born, the answer given was: “Weiss nicht.” The answer had been given in the German language. “Weiss nicht” translated into English means “I don’t know.” The patron, who didn’t know the German language thought that “Weiss nicht” was the place where the ancestor was born, which phonetically spelled would be recorded as “Viceneck.”