Soundex

Rediscovering the Power of Soundex in Genealogy Research

Do you remember using Soundex to locate ancestors in the 1900 U.S. Census? I certainly do. I spent hours scrolling through Soundex microfilm for an entire state, trying to pinpoint someone’s location in the census. With today’s digitized records and Ancestry’s robust hinting system, this once-essential tool is often overlooked—but it still has incredible value.

The beauty of the Soundex system lies in its ability to group similar-sounding surnames under the same code, regardless of spelling. My Crawford surname is a perfect example. Its Soundex code is C616. Even when older records spell it as “Crafford,” it still shares the same code—C616—thanks to Soundex.

In the early days of research, I manually used a Soundex chart to determine the code for each surname. The system keeps the first letter of the surname and follows it with three numbers based on the sounds of the next consonants. Today, there’s no need to calculate by hand—online Soundex calculators do the job in seconds.

The real power of Soundex is in its ability to simplify the search process. Instead of trying every possible variation of a surname, you can search by Soundex and retrieve records for multiple spellings. While Crawford doesn’t have many variants, some of my Dutch surnames are another story entirely.

Take my NAFUS surname. I’ve seen it listed as Naffus, Naphus, Nevius, and even Nefjes in online trees and historical documents. Many of these share the Soundex code N120. Variants like “Nefjes” (due to the ‘J’) would be N122, while versions with an inserted ‘R’ may have entirely different codes depending on letter placement. According to the Joannes Nevius book, there are nearly 300 variations—but Soundex narrows them down to just a few key codes.

Thankfully, Ancestry supports this functionality. By changing a surname search to “Exact and Soundex”, I expanded my results significantly. For example, searching the 1850 New York census for “Nafus” using Exact and Soundex returned 219 results, compared to just 8 with an exact match.

If FamilySearch were to incorporate Soundex capabilities into its experimental full-text search tool, it could unlock even more possibilities for researchers. Here’s hoping they bring this time-tested tool into the digital age.