Genealogy Chat

The Roman Emperor, Hadian was also spelt Adrian. Augustine was also Austin, probably how the former was pronounced. D

My grandmother's surname was Coan, which my mother always pronounced Cone but my grandmother was actually registered as Cone. Quite by chance last year, I stayed at the B&B of a previously unknown relative who pronounced it as Co-un. On the 1861 census, I think I have found the immigrant forefather as Cowen. Someone who couldn't write, coming from Northern Ireland to Cumberland gives their name ... how do you spell it? Anyone's guess. I think I have also found a death spelt Corn too.

I think it would be more remarkable if anyone could say they had NEVER found a spelling variation in a name! Marjorie

If you ever find you have a surname that begins with a vowel you can almost guarantee that at some point it will have an H added, Anson becomes Hanson which can then be Henson etc. Also, if the name begins with H then you'll find that the H will be omitted. That is something I forgot when searching 1837 site and pulling my hair out!!! Heather

It's also common for given names to have odd spellings. In my FTM tree I have From the 1600s - Dorite (Dorothy) Jennett (Janet) Androw (Andrew) Margire (Marjorie) Jone (Joan or John?) Rychart (Richard) Elsebeth (Elizabeth) Cristan (Christian) Magrett (Margaret) Michell (Michael) Jana (presumably Jane) Munda (Anyone like to guess?) and strangest of all, I think - Elenorer (Eleanora) (my Grandma) whose birth was recorded in 1882, long after standard spellings were the norm. I won't even start on the variations of my maiden name - I've discovered more than a dozen different spellings from it's first mention in 1215. CB >|<

Yes, very common. I have Chowns/Chownes/Chouns/Chowndes Mealing/Maling/Malin/Mellin Grey/Gray Smoothy/Smoothey Barns/Barnes Mathews/Matthews we tend to think of spelling as fixed now, but it is only recently that the majority of people have needed to write their names down. Bear in mind regional accents and sloppy writing and its no wonder that we have so many variants. nell

It is extremely common, it was not until the start of the 1900 that the masses started to learn to write. A common change was the addition or omission of a letter, as you found with Grub / Grubb. We have Goldthorp / Goldthorpe and Bettridge / Betteridge, to name but two. All make the research that more interesting...!

There can't be a surname in the land that hasn't mutated at some point. There were phases of 'prefered' spellings. Spellings were fluid and letters interchangeable, particularly 'y' and 'i'. Foreigners changed or had their names changed. Regional accents could create some wild variations of what was, to the authorities, an unfamiliar name. That's just the contemporary changes; the transcribers frequently have their own interpretation of what a name should be.

I think its fairly common. I have the name Birch/Burch, that changes from census to census. Also the name Peberdy which changed to Pebardy. I suspect that was due to a regional accent. The lady in question came from Leicstershire and moved to London. Maxine

My friend was quite pleased when her Herring ancestors turned into Herons.

Hi Paula, its possible. I had a Codlin, Codland, Codling person!!!

Thanks All Its good to know I'm not going mad! Thanks again for the really quick responses ... P

The notion of 'correct' spelling is fairly recent. There are six surviving signatures of William Shakespeare, all of them different, including two different ones on his will. None of them use the spelling 'Shakespeare'!

You will find the the spelling of names changes all the time, especially in the 1800's when a lot of ordinary people couldn't spell. I have lots of certificates with ' X - the mark of ' as a signature, so if people couldn't even write there own names, then they wouldn't know if someone else was spelling it correctly or not. You just have to check other things, like other family members, ages, occupations and addresses, to work out if it's the same family. It's never easy!! Kath. x

In a word - Extremely. You only have to look at Familysearch to see the many spellings there may have been and with your name Grub, Grube, Grubb, Grubbe - but then you have got off lightly. Name changes are mainly down to illiteracy at the time and census enumerators writing what they thought was the spelling of a name and also when it comes to bmd certs the way a cleric interpreted what he heard.

Yes it is common,my ancestors names and variant from this-Cowling,Couling,Coulling,Cooling to this,Coolin. All sound familiar but are spelt differently.

Most of the time the records we use to research our trees were written by people who weren't actually our ancestors, vicar, registrars, enumerators etc. Many of our ancestors were illiterate so didn't know how their names were spelled. The person who recorded the info just wrote down what name he thought he heard, with his own version of the spelling. It is only really in the last hundred years or so that the spelling of a surname has become a constant, as more people could read and write.

Hi All In the continuing search to find my Gt(x3) Grandfather, I have a possible family match on the census, the only problem is that it appears that they decided to change the spelling of surname from Grub to Grubb. I dont think its a trascription error as I have found a BMD record for William Grub b.1852 Winslow, Bucks, he also appears on the 1881 England Census. William disappears while the remainder of the family turn up on the 1891 census now calling themselves Grubb (or I believe so anyway). Is this possible ? or am I barking up the wrong tree.... Any Ideas ????? Cheers.... P