Search Otago Nominal Index
In 1989 the Hocken Library (now the Hocken Collections) and the New Zealand Society of Genealogists Dunedin Branch commenced a joint project to produce an index to names of people in documents held by the library.
For more detailed information about the indexing project see an article by Noel Read in "The NZ Genealogist" March 2002, pages 121 to 125.
Ownership of the Otago Nominal Index resides with the Hocken Collections. This web version of the database is hosted by the University of Otago Library.
There are two types of search available: Basic and Advanced.
Basic has a keyword option, which does not need to be a name.
Advanced search has 14 fields on which to search.
Regardless of the search undertaken, the results will display the following five field headings:
Surname - clicking on this entry will take you to the entry, with all known fields.
Forename
Address
Event Place
Date
Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on 'Find Records'. The ‘ONI – Results of Search’ screen is displayed. Click on a Surname to see the full details.For a faster search enter as little information as possible.
Search results
If more than one match has been found the display order can be changed from unsorted to Name or Event Date. Some events do not have an Event Date and they will be listed first.When a person has an alias or the name is spelt in different ways in the same entry, all those names are grouped together.
Look through the list and scroll to the next or previous page if desired.
Click on a surname to see more details. The names beside SURNAME and FORENAMES are the ‘normal' names. Any aliases or alternative spellings of the name are shown below the ‘normal' names.
SURNAME AND FORENAMES
Surnames are in upper case followed by initials or forenames in lower case. Hyphens indicate where names or initials are not given in the document (but unfortunately some hyphens have been deleted). For a person for whom neither surname nor initials nor forenames are known, 'Name not known' is entered in the Surname field. A record is entered each time a name appears so multiple identical records in the database indicate multiple entries on the page in the document being indexed.Organisations are not indexed but if the name of an organisation appears to include persons' names (eg Read and Pearson Ltd), a record is included for each name and the name of the organisation is shown in the Comments field. If it is not clear whether a name is a forename or a surname (eg Thomas Allan Ltd), one record is included for each name as if each is a surname (eg one for 'THOMAS -' and one for 'ALLAN -'), and another record is included for 'ALLAN, Thomas'.
The three forms M', Mc and Mac have not been programmed to be interfiled, therefore separate searches should be made for all three forms.
Nicknames are either shown after forenames and enclosed in brackets or are shown in the Alias Forename fields.
Miss and Mrs are included after the forenames if they were in the document. Mr or Esq are not included even if included in the document (but Sex is shown as M).Titles such as Sir and the abbreviations jnr and snr are shown after forenames.
When searching for Chinese names, look in both the Surname and Forename fields for each part of the name.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
When the database is searched for a person's name, the ‘normal' Name and Alternative name fields are all searched. These alternative names are either aliases or alternative spellings such as typographical errors. This often occurs in the Otago Police Gazettes. In the 1898 Jubilee publications there are many instances of women's maiden names being noted.
ADDRESS OF PERSON
If known several records may be included for each business or residential address.BIRTHDATE
The database contains two fields for Birth Date, one in text format and one in date format. See Event Date section for an explanation.AGE
Until 1873 electors in this period had to be male and 21 years or over so in the Electoral Rolls age is given as 'Over 20'. For Jurors' Lists age is given as '21 to 60'. Age is normally in years but ‘m’ indicates months and ‘d’ indicates days for example 9m or 5d.
Most of the other documents indexed did not include this information.Blank = cannot be determined from the document.
Note that only males could be on Electoral Rolls prior to 1893. The Juror's List is probably the same. For people listed in Street Directories or Police Gazettes, sex is shown in the index only if specifically indicated in the document (Mr, Mrs, Miss, Esq, Sir). It is not assumed from typical masculine or feminine forenames. Sex is not usually inferred from occupations.OCCUPATION
For a business like 'Pearson and Turnbull Ltd, drainlayers', both Pearson and Turnbull are indexed as drainlayers even though one may be an accountant or one may have died.EVENT DESCRIPTION
The event that is being indexed. For most records the event is the person's appearance in an Electoral Roll or a Street Directory.The following abbreviations have been used:
HR = House of Representatives
OPC = Otago Provincial Council
SPC = Southland Provincial CouncilFor records from Police Gazettes, the event shows either Criminal suspect, Criminal offender, Crime victim, Police force or Personal mention, to indicate the person's role in the event. This is followed by brief details of the event. More information is often included in the Comments field.
When a document does not give a date for an 'original' event but does give a date for a consequent action (such as an arrest, sentence or discharge), that consequent action is entered in the Event Description field and the 'original' event is entered in the Comments field. If no date is given for an 'original' event or any consequent action, the principal event for that person in that item is entered in the Event Description field and the Event Date is shown as before the publication date of the document. All related actions are entered in the Comments field. Therefore if you are searching for specific crimes or other events, you need to search the Comments field as well as the Event Description field.
A link to the full list of entries in the Event Description field is available from the Find Records screen.EVENT PLACE
The place to which the electoral roll or street directory applies, usually an electorate or a town, or the place where an event such as a crime occurred.EVENT DATE
This may be shown in a variety of formats It can have qualifiers such as before and about. It can also have expressions like ultimo and instant instead of 'normal' dates. It may also show month only or day and month only (without any year).
When an Event Date in a document appears to be incorrect, the date given and a mention of this is made in the Comments field.SOURCE TITLE
This shows the document from which the names were takenVOLUME/ISSUE
This only applies to the Otago Provincial Government Gazette (1855 - 1864)PAGE NO.
Page number in the source document. Note that page numbers in street directories are in Roman Numerals. In some cases these Roman Numerals are incorrect in the document and the actual (incorrect) number is shown in the Page field but the correct number is shown in the Comments fieldPUBLICATION DATE
This is the publication date of the source.
Most entries in this field show a year only (from Electoral Rolls, Street Directories and Almanacs), others are in the format d mmm yyyy (eg 5 dec 1856).COMMENTS
Any other relevant information is entered here, and in many cases may contain a wealth of information about the subject.