Tamme Tammen--Two Hits in One

Searching for Ostfriesen names presents challenges and opportunities, particularly when the first and last names are unusual.It is even more of a challenge when the last name is the patronymic form of the first name. .I have an uncle whose name is Tamme Tammen. Born in the mid-19th century in Germany, Tamme was in Dawson County, Nebraska, in the 1880s and little else is known about him. I decided to see if there were any references to him on GenealogyBank.com. I was confused about one of the results when viewing the image. It did not appear to contain the name Tamme Tammen--instead it contained Frank Tammen and it makes an interesting point about the importance of thinking about our search results..

Date: Thursday, August 25, 1910  

Paper: Colorado Springs Gazette (Colorado Springs, CO)--obtained 

on GenealogyBank.com

Where was Tamme? A closer look at the highlighted "box" answered my question: Tamme was hiding within Tammen.

There are two boxes around the last name of Tammen. One appears to be highlighting the letters "Tamme" and the other appears to be highlighting the letters "Tammen." That's why this result appeared on my list of hits.

What I am a little unclear on is why all references to the last name of Tammen did not come up as a match to this search--unless there is something about this reference that I cannot understand. I was glad to discover this reference Frank Tammen is a potential relative that I had not thought to include as a part of my search.

Something else to think about--for those of us who have relatives with "repeated" names--and I have several: Gerd Gerdes, Eilt Eilts, Hinrich Hinrichs, etc.