While it might seem that having an unusual name would make the research process easy (thank goodness we weren’t Smiths), tracing the Ouderkirk family throughout history has been especially challenging because of all the different name variants/spellings, and transcriptions I have encountered. Modern-day transcribers from a specific local area are more able to recognize names from that particular region. Outsourcing of the transcription process, as has been done by Ancestry, has had some interesting outcomes. Non-standardized spelling, poor handwriting on original documents, and transcription errors have indeed caused this researcher to be quite creative in the use of wildcard searches. The two spellings found most often for Jan Janse were Ouderkerk
and Ouderkerck. The spelling variant Ouderkirk
seems to have made its way into the records at the time of Peter and Hendrik Takel Ouderkirk.
Below are the name variations that I have encountered to date. I have to say that finding the record under *H?Ert was probably my biggest coup!
Ouderkerk
Ouderkerck
Ouderkuk
Ouderwark
Oudicark
Onderkerk
Ouderkirk
Ouderkink
Olderkirk
OUterkirk
Onderkirk
Oadakirk
Oderkirk
Oderkirke
Odakirk
Odekirk
Ohkert
Autokirk
Auderkerk
Adurkirk
Anderkirk
Duderkirk
*H?Ert
Say What?
Just how DOES one pronounce Ouderkirk? The Dutch name Ouderkerk means, Older Church, and its original pronunciation was likely very similar to Ow-ter-care-kuh, with the primary accent on Ow, the secondary accent on care, and the kuh
at the end very soft and almost unvoiced. Note that the d
is pronounced like a t.
There really isn’t a consensus on any one particular way in which to say Ouderkirk. The different pronunciations are usually determined by the region in which the name occurs, although there ARE exceptions! I have attempted to record the pronunciations that I have come across to date, but there may be more to be found. The differing pronunciations may also help to explain some of the spelling variants.
For the following pronunciation guides, the Oo
rhymes with the oo
in moon, the Au
rhymes with the beginning of auto, the Ow
rhymes with cow, the er
rhymes with her, and the accent is always on the first syllable. The middle syllable is unvoiced, sometimes sounding like a soft duh
or tuh, much like the schwa sound of a vowel. Sometimes it sounds more like der.
I live in Central Ontario, Canada. My ggg grandfather, Hendrik (Henry) Takel Ouderkirk, and his third wife, my ggg grandmother, Sarah Eliza Casselman, are buried in a cemetery here in town. My grandmother, Edna Forth Prosser, granddaughter of Henry's daughter Lucy, pronounced the name as Oo-der-kerk
or Oo-duh-kerk. However, my cousin Lois Catalano’s grandmother, Lucy Willson, also a granddaughter of Lucy Ouderkirk, pronounced the name Oh-der-kerk. Similarly, I have noted that the Ouderkirks who descended from Henry Ouderkirk and his first wife, Magdalena, refer to themselves as Oh-der-kerk
and live within a sixty km radius of here.
In the American midwest to west, the name is generally pronounced Oh-duh-kerk
or Oh-der-kerk
and is usually spelled Odekirk or Oderkirk. In Michigan, however, it has evolved into a pronunciation of Au-tuh-kerk
or Au-duh-kerk. This does help explain census records from Michigan that were found under the spelling of Autokirk.
In Eastern Ontario and upstate New York, the name Ouderkirk seems to have retained some of its original pronunciation. There, it is generally pronounced as Ow-der-kerk
or Ow-duh-kerk.