By far the main reason there are all these variations is that, until the twentieth century or close to it, most people simply didn't care or notice how their name was spelled. (The example most often used is Shakespeare, who spelled his own name any old which way as he signed things.) If our ancestors were able to see these discussions on "why did they change the spelling here and not there" they would have thought we were daft. There were a few pedantic types who spelled their surnames consistently, but they were in the minority. Research the baptismal records of one family in a parish over a hundred years or so, and you might see one spelling used for twenty years, then another for ten years, then back to the first spelling for the next thirty years -- the changes occuring when one minister died or left and another took his place. Each preferred a different spelling of the name as he heard it, and the family would not have seen any reason to object even if they signed it a different way. Sometimes one does know the reason for a more recent change. The Home/Hume clan were said (this is a popular legend, so how true it is I don't know) to be divided as to how to spell even such a short, simple name because their battle cry was their name. Some thought "Home! Home!" sounded like they were cowards who wanted to retreat, so they emphasized a dialectal pronunciation and made the name Hume. The former British Prime Minister by that name spelled it Hume, his own brother spelled it Home. One entertaining example preserved in my husband's family explained why their surname was Gibb in Scotland, but acquired an s at the end when his great-grandfather emigrated to Canada in the late 19th century. The great-grandparents had a family of seven children ranging in age from 14 down to a new baby, with the oldest the only girl. On the sea journey over, the mother fell during a storm and broke her leg, leaving the overseeing of the five mobile boys more under the eye of their father than he could cope with. Landing in Quebec, the mother was carried off the ship by a sailor, while the daughter followed carrying her baby brother, leaving the father struggling to herd five hyper-excited little boys each intent on being the first to push a brother off the dock into Canadian water. The clerkish official checking off names asked him for the full names of everyone in his party. Distracted and harried, the father said, "They're all Gibbs", meaning Gibb in the plural. Presumably the clerk interpreted this to mean "They all have the surname Gibbs" and wrote everyone down that way, adding the first names as the father reeled them off. It was some time before they all noticed that they were being addressed by a new name, and the mother decided she liked the sound of it with the added s. So they kept it. And yes, there have been many studies done of spelling and pronunciation variations of names within clans, families, and locations. Modesty prevents me from mentioning my own PhD thesis of name variants in christening records from 1650 to 1850 in Perthshire -- that and the fact that I'm not sure if the 1968 thesis was preserved anywhere :-) . However, consult the back issues of publications of the American Name Society and the Canadian Society for the Study of Names, specifically their respective journals, A Journal of Onomastics and Onomastica Canadiana. Margaret Gibbs On 20/10/2013 6:29 AM, Janet wrote: > It seems as though we could never exhaust the topic of name variations. > A cousin of mine asked "Who put the additional "n" in our name?" > Some names appear to have been changed because someone wrote them, transcribed them or > pronounced them differently. > Did that apply to Parish records or was it after formal registration?. I find both > applies. > I have an OPR marriage without the "n" and an OPR birth with the "n". > One could perhaps ask frivolously, "Did someone get to the edge of the page and not put > another consonant on the name where it should have had two?" I suspect we may never > have clear answers but I would like to get near to realising the facts. > Has anyone done a study of a name change? > > Janet > > >