FamilySearch Indexing: Determine Swedish Parish Name and Place Names

Back to FamilySearch Indexing: Swedish Church Records up to 1860►

Place names are very important to Swedish family history research. While indexing some place names will be difficult to decipher. You can type in the place name the best you can, but your accuracy will increase if you compare the place name to another source.

To help with this problem you can:

1. Use a Look up list to search for a matching place name (see Lookup List under Indexing Instructions.)

2. Figure out what parish you are working in to use sources like:

- The parish page in the FamilySearch Wiki for the parish you are working in.

- The household examination place index for the parish you are working in.

- Use another Swedish gazetteer to help figure out the place name.

3. Go to the FamilySearch Forums for Sweden and ask for some help to figure out a place name.

Remember: Although you may use one of these sources above to figure out a place name, you should type the place name into the indexing tool exactly as it appears in the record. Do not modernize the spelling.

Determine the Name of the Parish based on the Film Number (DGS number)
To figure out what parish the image you are indexing came from, do the following:

1. Find the film number, also called DGS (Digital Genealogical Society) number for the batch you are indexing. This is found accross the top of the screen while you are indexing. For example:

FamilySearch Indexing - Sverige, Södermanland - Kyrkoböcker till 1860 [Del 2]/004148088[174]

In this case the numbrs 004148088 is the DGS number.

Or you can find the film number (DGS number) right after you sign in on the same line as the batch. It is the line you would click on to open a batch.

2. Once you have the DGS number you can find out what parish the image is from in 2 ways:

A - Going to the Indexing Project Home Page, scroll down to Additional Information and click on Project Instructions, then scroll down to Parish Names and Farms, and then click on no. 2 Click here to see a document that lists parish names by film number. Once the file is open click on Ctrl + F to open a search field. Type the DGS number in the search field and click on the "find next" icon pointing right, or click on the "drop down" icon pointing down and click on "Find Next in Current PDF". After you click, the program will move your screen to the number and highlight the number in blue. Next to the number you will see the name of the parish.

B - Clicking on the county you are working in from the list below. Once the page is open click on Ctrl + F to open a search field. Type the DGS number in the search field and run the search.


 * Jönköping


 * Kalmar


 * Södermanland


 * Uppsala


 * Örebro

4. Knowing the parish can help narrow down the list of farm names that may have been recorded. Click here to see a document that lists the farms within each parish.