On Sunday, May 8, 2016 at 3:19:29 PM UTC-7, Kathy Becker wrote: > Greetings, > As a neophyte to the wonderful world of genealogy, I am constantly > confronted with various spellings of a surname and I'm curious as > to how important the spelling actually is. Depends on whom you ask. Given that different spellings were used for the same individuals during their own lives, there is rarely a single 'right' spelling, but a failure to employ the commonly-used versions leads to internet search chaos. SOmetimes a form that is not historically correct may still be the best to use in a search, because it has become standard. > I'm asking the experts in this group if there are websites (free or > otherwise) that can be trusted (with documentation) for information > provided. Unfortunately, the level of expertise needed to provide thorough trustworthy information across the breadth of medieval Europe makes it nearly impossible that a site would be accurate for everything it tries to cover, meaning the best sites have their weak areas. I would suggest that a site with limited scope that cites original documents is most likely to be trustworthy. Bronwen suggested the Genealogics site, and you could certainly do worse, but bear in mind that it is based on secondary material - on published books, etc., rather than direct research for the most part, and so it is not free from error primarily because the cited sources themselves were incorrect. Still it is superior to the average collection of names found on most internet genealogy sites. taf