Wildcard Searching for Placenames
Wildcards are symbols that you can use to substitute for letters in a word where you suspect there are different spellings for the same place or perhaps you are just not that sure of the name but have a rough idea. Some sites do not support wildcard searching at all, which can be a bit of a pain. Instead, use some of the principles I outline below and construct a list of likely synonyms and methodically work through them in the search boxes.
I've chosen to highlight this technique with reference to place names as I found plenty of variations but you can equally apply them to other search terms such as forenames and surnames. Townland and parish names in particular seem to be very fluid and can alter back and forth over time. So, here are a few things to try with the variations I've noticed to make sure you cast your net as wide as possible - just be prepared to sift through longer lists of candidates which will inevitably include some that are not what you want.
For illustrative purposes only, I'm going to use an asterisk (*) to mean substitute any SINGLE letter and a percentage sign (%) to mean substitute any number of letters. Each website will have different symbols to mean the same thing, so be sure to check out any instruction pages you find to understand which you need to use.
Don't forget to revisit my Rules? What Rules? page to remind yourself of some of the other things to look out for when searching e.g. different suffixes etc. and think about how to use wildcards at the end of words to make sure you find them all.
I've chosen to highlight this technique with reference to place names as I found plenty of variations but you can equally apply them to other search terms such as forenames and surnames. Townland and parish names in particular seem to be very fluid and can alter back and forth over time. So, here are a few things to try with the variations I've noticed to make sure you cast your net as wide as possible - just be prepared to sift through longer lists of candidates which will inevitably include some that are not what you want.
For illustrative purposes only, I'm going to use an asterisk (*) to mean substitute any SINGLE letter and a percentage sign (%) to mean substitute any number of letters. Each website will have different symbols to mean the same thing, so be sure to check out any instruction pages you find to understand which you need to use.
- Places that begin with BALLY- might also be found as BALLINA- or possibly BAILE-, so for Ballycastle for example, use BA*L%CASTLE to find them all and additionally deal with transcription errors that don't recognise the double 'L'.
- Similarly you will find KILL- and KIL- used at the beginning of thousands of townlands, so for Kiloughter for example, use KIL%TER to find more candidates.
- Vowels seem to be liberally sprinkled with abandon in different versions of the same place, especially A and AU e.g. DONAGHMORE and DONAUGHMORE or AUGHAVANAGH and AGHAVANAGH. Wherever you suspect this might be the case, replace them with % in your search term (you can see I've done that in the example above too.)
- INNIS- and INNISH- seem to be used interchangeably at the beginning of a lot of place-names, so use IN%S% plus whatever other letters would help qualify the end of the name.
- Transcriptions often get vowels and double letters wrong so you could try stripping them out completely and see what you get back. So, for example if you are searching for KILMURRY, you could try K%M*R%. However, some websites might baulk at this and the ones that do let you use it might return a very long list, so always try to qualify your search with other information if you can e.g. restrict the search to one county.
Don't forget to revisit my Rules? What Rules? page to remind yourself of some of the other things to look out for when searching e.g. different suffixes etc. and think about how to use wildcards at the end of words to make sure you find them all.
(c) Irish Geneaography - 2020
