Why Searching by Placename Can Solve Genealogy Indexing Errors

Here's a hint on why you may not find the person you are searching for in a database.

While searching a parish register today, I found a whole page of burials where the person was described by their name and then the area they lived in. Unfortunately this wasn't entirely clear that the final word was a placename and so when indexed the page has had the placename used instead of a surname. 

This has resulted in a lot of people being buried with the surnames of the parish and surrounding villages.

Now I found these because I was reading the images rather than relying on the database and wanted to add an entry that I found on the page to the family tree I was working on. 

Yes - that age old rule of always checking the original document. 

There were just too many entries for me to work though line by line correcting them, and this may be a bigger problem than just one page. So, for future researchers, I've reported the error to the database owner and hope this will be corrected in the near future.

Indexing errors and transcription quirks can hide people in ways you don't expect. Even when you're searching correctly, sometimes databases are hiding them in plain sight.

If you're feeling completely suck, you're always welcome to reach out. Helping people to untangle research puzzles is one of my favourite things to do. 

Text written by a human, Image generated by ChatGPT, 13 February 2026.