I've seen different explanations for the various spellings. 1. "eim" spelling was the German spelling; when U.S. was fighting against Germany, some Americans wanted to dissociate themselves from the fatherland so changed the spelling to "ime". You find this in many names in the U.S. i.e. Stein became Stine; Weinsburg became Winesburg, etc. 2. In the case of the KIMES spelling, the "s" was possibly just added somewhere along the way. To explain, when they talked about the KIME family down the road, they referred to them as the KIMES Family (plural). Possibly census takers, etc. mistakenly added the "s" to the end of KIME, making the name KIMES. And now a KIMES family in plural are KIMESes. 3. And, of course some of the spelling changes were due to census takers not being familiar with the name. If no one in the family was literate, they had to spell the name the way that seemed logical to them. Terry wrote: > > Do you know anything about the various spellings of Kime. > __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Plan great trips with Yahoo! Travel: Now over 17,000 guides! http://travel.yahoo.com/p-travelguide