Over my years of translating all kinds of genealogy records, I have gathered quite a collection – and bookmarked – many helpful websites to help with genealogical transcription and translation. And in this post, I want to share them with you!
This website, kirchenkalender.com, is a must-have for working with church records. As those you of you who have worked with church records know, scribes sometimes used names of feast days in lieu of dates. This makes finding out what day your ancestor was born a bit more complicated! But with this website, you simply type in the year of your record, and scroll down to find the feast day referenced. It will then tell you what date the feast day fell on for that specific year!
2. German Military Terms Glossary
Military records can be very difficult to transcribe and translate, as there are often military-specific abbreviations and phrases you won’t always find in a normal German dictionary. For these tough cases, I like to use websites like the one above which provide a great list of military terms in German and English.
For those of you dealing with Prussian records and confusing name changes for towns, Kartenmeister is the site for you. It includes over 100,000 locations east of the Oder and Neisse rivers, and helps you figure out the current and/or past name of a place as well!
Just as Prussian town names can be difficult to find, so too can Swiss town names – especially without the use of MeyersGaz. One website that I like to use to verify Swiss town names is ortsnamen.ch – has saved me many a headache in figuring out handwritten town words.
For those of you with Jewish records, this gazetteer is the site for you. It has the names of over one million localities in 54 countries – plus much more on the rest of the website itself.
6. List of Illnesses – GenWiki
Those causes of death columns can be tricky, especially if your ancestor died of an obscure illness. While this GenWiki site is German to German, it includes the definitions of a lot of illnesses you may not find elsewhere. Simply copy and paste the definition to DeepL.com to find out what it means.
7. List of Illnesses #2 – Daniel Stieger
While GenWiki is great, it may not always include every illness you find on a record. That’s why I like to have multiple sites to check for different topics. Daniel Stieger’s site with his list of illnesses is also German to German, but again, just pop that definition over to DeepL.com and you’ll be good to go.
8. Last Names – Family Education
Just like towns, last names can be hard to verify as well. I always like to check last names on websites to make sure they really exist. In addition to namespedia.com and forebears.io, this family education site is a good one to check! You can use it for first names as well.
9. Last Names with the Ending of…..
Sometimes, a last name is particularly hard to decipher, and you can only read the last few letters. In this website, you can browse last names by their ending – such as “ung” or “bein”, to name a few” – and see if your mystery name appears in the list!
10. Abbreviations in Church Books
This site has a great list of common abbreviations you will find in church books – with the German word the abbreviation stands for, plus an English definition. Definitely one to bookmark!
9 Responses
Thank you for your website list for researching my German ancestors. We (my husband & I) have been actively researching our ancestor’s history for many years. Needless to say, many hours were used to research in the wrong way. Fortunately, we love to travel and have had the opportunity to visit many places mentioned on our tree. I have even traveled to Germany. My research gave me the gift of two new cousins located in the Halle, Westphalia, Germany area.
Have just become notified of your site from a friend, attended one seminar and was very impressed.
My husband and I are in our 80’s. reasonably healthy and still looking for more information to add to our trees. As long as we are able, our research will continue. We are always ready to learn more.
That’s wonderful that you have traveled to Germany, Barbara! And that you got to meet new cousins – how exciting! Welcome to our community – we are happy to have you here!
#6 List of Illnesses link didn’t produce any information. I entered “Krankheitsbezeichnung” in the GenWiki search box and came up with:
https://wiki.genealogy.net/Kategorie:Krankheitsbezeichnung,_Medizinischer_Begriff
Is that the link you intended?
Thank you – we updated it!
Thank you for these!
Glad you enjoyed them!
Glad you can use them!
Thanks for sharing this with us.
Glad it is helpful!