Have you wondered what a wild card is but didn’t like to ask? Wild cards are special symbols that are used in searching to represent a certain number of unknown letters in a word. This can be helpful when searching for surnames with various spelling options.
An asterisk * represents zero to six characters.
A question mark ? will replace one letter.
Using the word Johnson as an example, substituting an asterisk for “so” in the name, John*n will find Johnson, Johnston, Johnsen, or Johnstone, among other name combinations. Substituting a question mark for the “s”, John?on would find Johnson or Johnsen but would not find Johnston.
The use of wild cards is restricted to keywords and names that have at least the first three letters specified in most applications, but that rule is not always true, as some sites will allow for fewer letters.
As an example, when using Google * stands for an entire word.
Several genealogical databases allow wildcard searches (check the “advanced” search or database instructions). Ancestry.com offers several wildcard search options for its many databases, as does Find My Past and many other major genealogical websites.
- In Ancestry and Family Search databases names that differ by one letter use the ? mark as a wildcard. A search for Johns?n will return both Johnsen and Johnson.
Search alternate spelling with the asterisk * which represents 0 to 5 unknown characters. The query Bolan* will return results for Bolander, Bolanger, Bolandre, etc. A query for Smel*er will search for Smeltzer and Smelzer among others.
- In the Scotland’s People database you can substitute * or % for zero or more characters. Substitute ? or _ for one character only. These characters can be substituted anywhere in the surname or forename and can be employed in various combinations.
- The FindMyPast database is similar to Ancestry and Family Search as it recognizes both the ? mark and asterisk*. You can use an asterisk* in a search field where you suspect there may be an alternative spelling. This will pick up places where a letter may be missing, repeated, or incorrect.
For example, a surname search for Fo*kes will return results with spelling variations that include Foakes, Fokes (*acting as a zero character), Folks, Fookes, Forkes, Foukes, Foulkes and Fowkes. If you are sure that there is only one incorrect letter, you can use the ? symbol. For example Sm?th, will return results for both Smith and Smyth.
You can use as many wildcards as you need to in a search field, so the results returned for search term Bla*k*mo*r*include the following variants: Blackmoer, Blackmoore, Blackmor, Blackmore, Blackmore Lee, Blacksmore, Blakemore and Blakmore.
Another search method, Truncation, also called stemming, allows you to search for all variations of a word with multiple endings. It uses the root word followed by a truncation symbol at the end. Different databases and search engines use different symbols. The asterisk (*) is the most common, but check the help pages of the database to verify which symbol to use. Some databases automatically search for plurals but others do not. Truncation searching ensures that plural versions of your search term are included in your results.
Examples:
- comput* will search for computer, computes, computing, etc
- histor* will search for history, historical, histories, etc.
- child* will search for child, children, childs, childhood, etc.
Good luck with your research!