Martin The million dollar question Brown or Browne / Clarke or Clark / Cowan or McCowan or Coan. I have this problem all the time. For myself , I use the most common form in the family but always make a note in the file somwhere to tell me another spelling has been used . What I do get frustrated with are some people who contact me re Clarke and I have their family in my database but they reject the details because ' mine were CLARK without the E ' .. lost count of the number of times Ive been frustrated with people ! Any name I research I always check for spelling variations particulary in Census. More puzzling are those families who decide to have a complete name change . One of my IOW LALLOW families decided to adopt the surname LAWRENCE and use LALLOW as a middle name . I have kept them as Lallow but made a note they opted for Lawrence . All gets a bit confusing Angela