Hi Gerald de France, there were several reasons for the changing of names over time: 1. spelling wasn't standardized in past times, it was more shall we say impressionistic; 2. many people were illiterate, so those who could write transcribed the names phonetically--for example, among the michigan french canadians, anglos 'played it by ear' and turned Lauzon into Lozon, Lawson, or even Loso, Deneau into Denno, Cousineau into Cosino (which sounds Italian), etc. My ancestors were Lauzons till the mid 1850s, then Lozon. 3. some immigrants wanted to break ties with their former nationalities and become more 'american'--so Heinrich Weiss became Henry White, Jean Bienvenue became John Wellcome, etc. This happened to all immigrants, and obviously the more difficult the name to pronounce or spell the more variants--Belloq might end up Bellock, Belloc, Bellick, Belloak, Bellek...the limits are only those of the human ear to hear a sound differently, and a bad speller to spell it oddly :). also the bigger the family and the more far flung, the more variants...since english, irish, and regional american ears would all hear it differently. the simpler the name, the smaller and more geographically limited the family, the less chance of ending up with 50 variants. if the family went straight from France to New Rochelle NY and had very few descendants all of whom stayed put in the vicinity, the name might remain fairly pure. if they had huge families and were pioneers, like my Huguenot forebears, different branches in differrent areas ended up with different names (eg, Francisco, Franciscoe, Fransisko, Van Sisco, Van Cisco, Sisco, Cisco, Ciscoe, Sisko, Sischoe...) Chris en Californie :) -- "Hier stande ich. Ich kanne nicht als (Here I stand, I can do no other)." ~Martin Luther