#52 Ancestors 2022 Week 15 How Do You Spell That: The Orthographic Trauma of Growing up Scrivener

 Now SCRIVENER is fine English name with a distinguished history.  The name means "writer" and the Coat of Arms displays a hand with a quill pen, very appropriate.  The motto is "This hand for my country." Again, a noble aspiration. 

But, if you grow up in a family named Scrivener, you get used to hearing the inevitable question, accompanied by a furrowed brow: How do you spell that?  Scriveners get used to pronouncing the name very slowly and distinctly (accompanied by an eyeroll and a long sigh) so the listener can hear each syllable clearly. SCRIV-EN-ER!! (That's V as in Victor.)

And even at that, there is only a 50/50 chance that your name will be spelled correctly when that invitation/bill/newsletter arrives in the mail. 

And if you grow up to be a family history researcher, you can never escape the name even if you marry into a much simpler family name like Jones. You have to be extremely clever to figure out all the possible variations under which you might find family members hidden. 

First, there are the fairly simple variations that different branches of the family latch onto for one reason or another: Scrivner, for example, for the super efficient ones who find that extra syllable too taxing. 

Scivener, leaving out the R because it's just too harsh and doesn't roll off the tongue.

Or ScrivOner and ScrivIner for those who hate having two E's in their name. 

Scriveneer

OrScrEvener, for those who love having E's in their name. For those who really like E's, there is ScriveneEr, which sounds rather swashbuckling. 

Scribner is a variation I have found mainly in the New England branch of the family, the one that claims the famous publisher among its numbers. 

There are some that are simple mis-transcriptions, like SErivener, which is why it always pays to look at the original document if you can find it.

Then there are the really creative ones--these generally require a census-taker who doesn't speak English or a transcriber with extremely poor eyesight to develop.  Like this one in the 1850 Census of Anne Arundel County MD: Pirwner.  Fortunately, I happened to be looking at the page for another reason and saw that the family names matched a Scrivener family that I knew was living in the county at the time.  I probably would never have found that one by perusing the census index.

In my personal experience as a Scrivener, the variation I found most often was the insertion of an H into the name: ScHrivener, along with any of the other variations.  I don't find that one too much in genealogy research, but I certainly heard it very often in life as a Scrivener. 

Just to conclude with a little data on these variations, here's what I found in the 1850 Census of Maryland, where my Scrivener family mostly lived:

Scrivener: 45

Scrivner: 32

Serevener: 5

Pirwner: 3

A hundred years later in the 1950 Census, I found 53 Scriveners in the MD-DC-VA area.  1 Schrivener and 4 Scrivoners. 

Of course, among those Scriveners in 1950 were these familiar families:

At 209 Register Avenue in Rodgers Forge:

Frank P. Scrivener Sr. , state roads engineer, age 49,with wife Elizabeth and children Carolita (? Sorry Aunt Reds) working in a department store (Hutzlers, I believe), John D., working in a hotel (the Emerson) William B.  doing highway work, and Robert K.

At 8529 Oak Road in Loch Raven:

Frank P. Scrivener Jr. age 25, a road contractor, his wife Anne S. age 24 and of course his beautiful baby girl, Anne H. age 2. 

Still, despite the trauma of having an easily mangled surname, as a researcher, it is a blessing, because at least Scrivener is a fairly unusual name and if I find it, or some variation in the mid-Atlantic region, I can be pretty sure they are related to me one way or another. 

All together now: 

S  C  R  I  V  E  N  E  R