Kia said: > Another thing to remember is the the person involved in the event (baptism of Simon's child) probably wasn't checking on the person recording the event (clerk/vicar/etc) and so the clerk may have written NICHOL instead of NICOL and Simon was none the wiser. I'm sure he wouldn't ask to check that the entry had been done to his satisfaction. > The clerk may have assumed that the name was spelled with a "H" as he knew someone that spelled it that way. ** As I mentioned in another post, many of the name variants are as a result of the parent of the child being illiterate, amd so unable to correct any variant spelling used in the register; but you also have the situation that most entries were written up some time after the event (hours or even days later), which is why we find so many entries with the child's name left blank - beceause the minister has forgotten the child's name; and sometimes one of the parents is wrongly named due to there being others of the same surname in the parish. It is indeed seldom that the entry would be examined by the parents. Incidentally, "vicar" is a term not normally used in Scotland since Reformation, the word "minister" being the norm in most presbyterian denominations. Scottish Episcopal Churches used the term "Priest". Gordon.