Frazer people - please help me out on this, as I am new to this list. Is the FRAZIER list the same as the FRAZER list??? If not, why not? As family historians, we know that most of the surname spellngs we find result from someone who does NOT bear the name writing it down in one record or another. As we know - spelling was NOT our ancestors' long suit; Shakespeare himself spelled his own name five different ways. I have seen stated as the first rule of genealogists: don't sweat the spelling! Many of our ancestors had limited, or no, ability to read and write for themselves. Even if they did, they were more often speaking their names to others to write down than writing themselves - when married, when a death took place, etc. As a result, names were reproduced phonetically by the clerks, etc., who took them down - and those who physically wrote the names may have been disinterested, hearing-impaired, or not very literate themselves. The whole story of the development of surnames plays into this - for a long time people had no second names at all - then only certain people did, who needed to be identified with specificity - then it was seen that second names were useful and most people began to have them - but for another long span of time there was no one right way to spell each name; people did not consider it important. The preferred spelling of each name probably took several generations to establish itself. Till then, the spellings were all over the map. Other aspects of life played a part - as when a bearer of name derived from language A went to live in a country where language B was spoken: e.g., think Scots settling in New France in the early 1700s. Will someone let me know the prevalent tone or sentiment of this list community on the above? I have FRASER/FRAZER/FRAZIER family to ask about, but will defer for a few days. Cheers to all, and thank you. Ginny Crawford California USA VCrawf@aol.com