A long,  long time ago, when I was trained, I was told to think of all the ways a name can be spelled, correctly or incorrectly, and all abbreviations for a name.  So when I searched Elizabeth Connolly, I search Elizabeth, Elisabeth, Liza, Lisa, Beth, Lizbeth, Eliza, etc, Conoly, Connolly, Connoly, Conolly, Conely, Conly, Connelly, Connely, Conelly, etc.  I did this search for a client a few years ago, a current owner search, and reported a judgement on Liza Conolly.  The title company reported to the lender, and requested a social security number and it was the same person as ordered Elizabeth Connolly.  The lender was furious because they orded the same search from the same title company the previous year and the judgment was not reported.  They were actually mad at me for reporting the judgment !  They demanded to know why, if the abstractor who did the previous search didn't report the judgment, then why did I report it !  I was almost speechless !  So I explained myself, the title company paid off the judgment and actually told me the name of the abstractor who missed the judgment. Some time later that abstractor struck up a coversation with me about searching nicknames and incorrect spellings, and they told me "I dont search that, and I would just tell the title company, well thats not their name, it wont hold up in court, it's not their name" .  Yes, this abstractor is still doing searches.

Sometimes I feel like I spend a little too much time searching all these variations, but you know what, I sleep like a baby.

Dont even get me going on foreign names........