To some extent, what Ángela Loura points out is made even more difficult by the *acordo* from the 1990s by which the Portuguese-speaking world agreed--to varying degrees--on standardizing spellings going forward, based on how they were actually being said. For example, many words that had "ct" in them, such as "projecto" changed to show how they were being pronounced: "projeto." (If only English did the same!) Thus, "Baptista" is now spelled "Batista." However, when doing genealogy, we strive to stay with the spellings as they actually appear on documents. For example, my great-grandmother's name appears as "Francesca" despite the fact that the only spelling I've seen--including for her own daughter--is "Francisca."
Then we have to factor in human error, as in the priest performing the baptism and not paying closer attention to what he's actually writing or the peasant pronouncing a name in such a way that the person writing it hears something else. Tomás Leal -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Azores Genealogy" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to azores+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/azores.
