BOSANKOE Spelling Variations - A List & Guide
Hello,
If you're fairly new to family history research, or at least to researching this surname, you may not be aware of just how many spelling variations (or transcription or typographical errors) there are of the surname BOSANCO.
Those of you whose surname is BOSANKOE or a variant thereof, will be all too familiar with the problems of spelling out your name and having someone record it in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways.(Even my ordinary names have been well and truly mangled over the years, and uncommon names suffer this fate far more than common ones).
While the following list is by no means complete, it's a good start.The list will be useful when searching sites that offer to include variants but confine themselves to distinct groupings of letters or vowel changes, rather than truly phonetic or typographical variations.
Some sites or software only offer wildcards ("*" or "?") if you enter three or more letters before or around the wildcards, which isn't much help when there are so many variables in both vowels and consonants.This is especially difficult because there are so many BOSANKOE variants with similar groups of letters in their structure.
I've found that by searching, when possible, by two standard wildcard forms, I can capture most records.B*s*n*o* and B*s*nq* will bring up most variants of the name in most databases.(Some sites won't allow the use of the asterisk - * ; try replacing it with the percentage symbol - %).
Be warned, B*s*n*o* will bring up all sorts of unconnected names, but the results are usually quickly retrieved.
If a database requires a string of 3 characters before any wildcard can be used, you will need to resort to the opening variants - Bas*n*o*, Bes*n*o*, Bis*n*o* etc, which will reduce the number of irrelevant results, but takes longer to pull all the variants you seek.
So, I've been compiling this list to make it easier to search for family members.I hope you find it as helpful as I have.
Variants of the surname BOSANCO, in more-or-less alphabetical order, include:-
BASANCO
BASANCOE
BASANKO
BASANKOE
BASSANKO
BESANCA
BESANCO
BESANCOE
BESANKA
BESANKO
BESANKOE
BESEDNOW
BESENKO
BESSANCO
BOSAN
BOSANCA
BOSANCE
BOSANCEO
BOSANCHO
BOSANCKO
BOSANCO
BOSANCOE
BOSANGUET
BOSANHOE
BOSANKA
BOSANKE
BOSANKO
BOSANKEO
BOSANKOE
BOSANQUE
BOSANQUED
BOSANQUET
BOSANQUIT
BOSANQUO
BOSANKS
BOSANSO
BOSANTO
BOSCANO
BOSEN
BOSENCO
BOSENKO
BOSENSTOW
BORNAKO
BOSNAKO
BOSNOLOE
BOSSANCO
BOSSANCOE
BOSUNKO
BUSANCO
BUSANCOE
BUSANKO
BUSANKOE
There may also be variants starting with P, T or V.The prefix letter variants will mostly date from when education was more common and people could spell out their name to a clerk.The spoken "B" and "V" are commonly mis-heard and switched when being written, just like "F" and "S".
Some of the names are probably variants of the word-stem that underlies BOSANCO.It would take a long study of the occurrences of the name in old documents to establish how the name evolved.
BOSANQUET and similar variants come from the French language, and probably Middle French, at a guess, at a time when surnames began to be more commonly used.It is associated with the Huguenots, of course, but the name existed a long time beforehand.
Note:- There were no significant, or even large, Huguenot settlements in the south-west of England, despite the coastal aspects of Cornwall and Devon.The great majority of the Huguenots settled in London, Kent, Essex and further along the eastern coast of England.Naturally, some migrated further into the UK, but for the most part they remained close to where they landed for a few generations.
London and other major towns, such as Canterbury, offered work, business and accommodation options, as well as plenty of Protestant churches willing to accept the refugees into their congregations.
The surname BOSANKO is most commonly associated with Cornwall.The Cornish language is Celtic, and closely related to Welsh and Breton.The Cornish traded with the Bretons (the people of Brittany) and other French and Mediterranean people from at least Roman times, and the two names have probably evolved in parallel over the centuries.
Most BOSANKOE people have at some time been recorded as BOSANQUET, and vice versa, and some families deliberately changed from the Cornish spelling to the French spelling.
This will usually have come about through migration to another County, or even a Country, or by learning of the London (French Huguenot) BOSANQUET family - which was well known in London banking and English cricket circles - and wishing to acquire a certain amount of prestige by association.
All up, it is simply a matter of pronunciation and spelling, rather than two distinctly different names.
I hope you have found this interesting and, more importantly, useful.
Cheers,
Heather
Victoria, Australia
PS - If you have any additions to the list, don't hesitate to post a reply to THIS message, rather than to a reply or creating a whole new message string, so they can all be grouped together.