Keyword and Naming Strategies

Two young men posing in suits — Salvador Caballero (right), Seattle, Washington, September 18, 1917, Courtesy Teresa Duran Verfaillie and FANHS

On a past project, I was trying to find a photo of a Filipino cannery worker that traveled between San Francisco and Alaska in the 1920s and 30s. I found that Salvador Caballero was listed in newspapers, union periodicals and archival records alternately as S. Caballero, Sal Caballero and Salvatore Caballero. Older documents will often add a middle initial to a name and sometimes abbreviate first names in ways we don’t often see anymore. For example, Geo. for George, Abig. for Abigail and Chas. for Charles, pop up frequently in historic newspapers and books. This Wiktionary list of English name abbreviations is a handy reference if you encounter this.

Group standing outside of a cabin — Arlo Lewis, Jim Bennett, Carol Bennett and others standing outside of the Taylor Wilderness Research Center, then known as Taylor Ranch, courtesy University of Idaho Special Collections

The University of Idaho’s Taylor Wilderness Research Station was previously Taylor Ranch. The town of Tensed, ID was originally named De Smet after a Belgian missionary, reversed and misspelled at the post office. As of 2022, the US Department of Interior renamed 71 natural areas around Idaho that had derogatory names.

The names of buildings, cities and natural resources can shift colloquially over time or over night. If you find a strange gaps in search results, try zooming out and searching more encyclopedic sources like Wikipedia or Geonames to check for semantic shifts.

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