In a message dated 11/9/2000 9:22:23 AM Pacific Standard Time, kayey@arkansas.net writes: << In a lot of my older family documents it is noted that the mother and/or father could not read or could not write. In that case, the spelling was left up to whomever was doing the documenting, whether is was a census or tax document. When families arrived to this country and were registered as in port, the name they registered with was listed by the person documenting the information - if they couldn't understand them or spelled names based on the way they sounded - then that was your name. Also, lots of people chose to take the "Americanization" spelling of their last name as opposed to the spelling used in their country of origin - ie Schneider and Taylor, Schmidt - Smith - Smyth, Stern and Star - etc. Either way, my Frazier family has a documented spelling of Fraser - the Scottish spelling. However, now we spell it Frazier - >> Thanks for your confirmation of what I have been saying, Kay! And in the last 150 years, families could decide which of the spellings they wanted for themselves, as your family did from FRASER to FRAZIER. In my FRASER line, we have three generations of FRAZERs (1700s) and then to FRASER (1820s onward). After my own personal brainstorming on this issue, I think FRASER is the usual Scottish spelling - probably the phonetic result of Scottish-accented speakers dealing with the French FRAZIER. The FRASER name was then rendered a number of ways, including a return to FRAZIER. Just my take on it - not wishing to argue or challenge anyone else's notions. Thanks for writing. This is an interesting discussion! Ginny Crawford