Heyning or Heijning?

Confusion all around on the spelling of our name.

The first Nicolaas clearly signed his name with dots on the “IJ” – most of the time. But some of signatures are without these dots, and also a Heijningh has been found, written by himself !  And since then, not much conistency around. Most of the family in the Netherlands in the past hundred years have spelled their names as Heyning, while their passport stated Heijning; it just was not an issue and was considered to be similar.

In our days we estimate, and Alexander will soon be able to confirm, that most of us write their name as Heyning, and have that registered as their official name. The issue only arose when typewriters and computers came in use, before those days it was not taken as an issue and civil cervants easily changed between the two versions.

We should realise that the “Y” does not exist in the Dutch alphabet, and that such is a unique postion in the world. Everyone moving abroad, will have noticed that their name was automatically written as Heyning, simply because the “IJ” and the “Y” are considered identical. Only with the heavy (border) control of the last years, foreign custom control noticed, but considers it the “IJ” as two seprate letters, the “i” and the “J” .