District Aliasing Overview Page

Welcome to the FreeBMD District Aliasing overview page. This page should provide all the information necessary for you to understand what we are trying to do and to tell you who how the team of district aliasers was formed and how it may grow in future.

Objective of district aliasing

The objective of district aliasing is to make it easier for people to find their ancestors in the FreeBMD database by minimising the number of searches based on geographical selection criteria they need to make to compensate for alternative spellings and abbreviations that were used for the same registration districts throughout the 19th century. It also makes it easier to find ancestors whose entries have a few illegible characters in, or a simple misspelling of, a recognisable registration district.

Overview of district aliasing

The district aliases files determine which of the entries that have been transcribed in the 'District' column in the index books appear on the list of districts that can be used to search the database.

The rectangular box gives an overview of what happens when the database
is built and the oval of what happens when the database is searched.

The aliases do not appear on this list, appearing instead in the search results when the 'standard spelling' for their district is used instead. This reduces the number of searches that are necessary to find an individual that would otherwise be necessary due to minor spelling variations of the district name.

The district alias files also

associate the registration districts to the appropriate counties, which is visible on the search page
provide the information about the hypertext links to the GENUKI pages of information about the standard registration districts, which is visible from the search results page

How does district aliasing affect me?

I'm a transcriber

There are no implications for the transcriber or for the WinBMD and SpeedBMD software. The user should enter anything that is written on the page in the District field, including multiple ? characters if they are present, and any of the characters as described in the file Hints and Tips for Beginners.

I'm a searcher

Spelling variations and mistakes and partially illegible entries make it difficult to find every entry that is in the database, and district aliasing is a mechanism that helps to make it easier to find people whose entry has such a problem for the District.

(i) not every entry can be found using a search based on the standard list of districts for this reason (e.g. Alvondale)
(ii) prior to the change in the search page made in Nov 2002, every entry in the database could be found based on one and only one search using the 'complete list of districts'

diagram showing transcribers files, database and 2 forms of search list

Ambiguous spellings like Alvondale cannot be found
using the short list but used to be on the long form of the district list

Aliasing means that a spelling such as St Germane does not appear on any list, since it is obviously an alternative spelling for St Germans.

Although the spelling on the district list is shown as St Germans, the information held about an individual entry from an index is held in it's original type what you see format, so the results of the search will comprise mostly of the entries where the district is spelt in the standard way, in this example St Germans, but interspersed with them will be other entries with alternative spellings such as St German and St Germane. Aliasing is the mechanism whereby these aliases are included on this list.

Note: Every spelling on the short form of the district list was also present on the long form of the list.

How are district aliases created?

One of the things that happens when the database is built is that a list of those spellings that might be candidates to become aliases is produced. This is distributed among a small team of experienced transcribers who decide if they are alternative spellings for any of the standard districts.

2 of the reports that are produced as the database is built
1. unk.txt is especially for the district aliasers
2. district-map.htm is for anyone to view the aliases using a browser

The list is split into chunks based on a letter of the alphabet. For each letter the alias file, called A.txt for the letter A, and the corresponding part of the candidate list, called A_unmatched.txt, is allocated to one of the district aliasers. He or she then adds the appropriate information from A_unmatched.txt to A.txt, and if for example it is appropriate to be aliased to a standard registration district that starts with another letter of the alphabet, he or she emails it to the aliaser who has been allocated the other letter.

How were the standard districts chosen?

The original acknowledged standard text on this subject is 'St Catherine's House Districts' by Ray Wiggins, and this was used initially as the basis for the list. However when the original '100 year rule' was dropped and post 1900 transcriptions started the list was extened based on the information from the booklet 'A Handbook to the Civil Registration Districts of England and Wales' by Brett Langston. It is also available on the GENUKI web site at http://www.ukbmd.org.uk/genuki/reg/. However, based on information in the FreeBMD database itself, the District Aliasing Team have made a few changes.

How many standard districts and alternative spellings exist?

The list of the standard registration districts appears in the software that the transcribers can use (WinBMD and SpeedBMD) as well as in the District field on the search list. It contains almost 700 entries for the period up to 1930 and more than 1100 for the whole period since the start of Civil Registration in July 1837..

However across the years the entries as written were not recorded with a standard spelling. Many of the longer districts have been abbreviated in different ways over the different index books. Also many of the handwritten index books were transcribed to create typeset books, and as in all transcription some errors were introduced. And finally, during the FreeBMD transcription exercise, some of the entries cannot be fully read. In time this should improve as the checking phase completes, but in the meantime the aliasing provides a mechanism for associating partially spelt and mistranscribed districts to a standard registration district.

How to become a district aliaser

The district aliasers are drawn from the pool of experienced transcribers. From time to time announcements will be made on the DISCUSS list when we are looking for more people.

I'm both a transcriber and searcher and concerned about how to find the strict TWYS entries

To learn in a little more detail how district aliasing works you might like to read the home page for the district aliasers.

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