Antonino DiVita (Di ita) - Last Name variation?

I changed Antonino's name to DiVita (all one word) and did put Di Vita in the "aka" which I had thought was only for first name variations or nicknamed.

I have never seen it as one word in any family notes or on photos so cannot be sure if I saw Di Vita on anything "official" or just our common usage.

My 1st cousin, once removed--Carl DeVita apparently changed it from Di to De--not sure why and his daughter Jan did not seem to know why when I asked her. On my mom's side the surname was Iacono in Italy and after moving to the US Mom's father and his brother both changed the name: one to Yacano and one to Yacona. Go figure!

I have found when using Google Di with space gets different results than DiVita.

Guess that is part of the "fun" of genealogy--all the various spellings people actually used and the "wild card" of census workers and others who tried to interpret what was said with an Italian accent, combined with the handwriting varieties and (my personal opinion) those who wrote things down did not have the time or willingness to get the correct info on the forms!

:)

Lisa Leone Anderson

Actually the "Birth Surname" field generally should be the name someone was given at birth. Since his birth record says "Di Vita" it should say "Di Vita" in the "Birth Surname" field. You could put "DiVita" in the "Also Known As" field if you want that to be searchable more easily that way.

Take a look at the Coalition for the Standardization of Geni Naming Conventions project: https://www.geni.com/projects/Coalition-for-the-Standardization-of-...

Actually I believe the most proper form of the name would be "di Vita" with a lower case 'd' but in Altavilla they didn't seem to do that in the 1800s. They seemed to use a capital 'D' with a space. I wouldn't be surprised if some records in Altavilla even have it written as "Divita" without the space and without the capital V.

The "Also Known As" field can be used for any type of name variations... If a female married and took her husband name and then married someone else and took his name then you could put her old married names in the "Also Known As" field. Or if there is some source out there that has a name mis-spelled it can go here as well. There is no restriction on it being for first names only. It's meant to be able to find profiles easier.

Some of the children of Vito DeVito even used different spellings and they were mostly born in Chicago so it's not always an easy answer though of course. :-)

John