I see from some of the answers that the transcribers of census records, or any records for that matter, than the transcriber must transcribe what they see. As one person wrote, letter for letter. There is no room for deciding that what is being seen is wrong, misspelled, or whatever. A transcriber is just that a transcriber. They are not editors, spell checkers or any other term for the same thing. The same goes for census takers. While I stated it was a "rule" that census takers weren't allowed to ask how to spell a name, I agree that I couldn't find that rule in any of government issued booklets about the various census returns and there was one book that was printed which specifically went through all the census returns, each one from 1790 to I think it was the 1980 return -- yea it even discuss returns we haven't been privy to yet. However, Loretto Dennsi Dzucs and Matthew Wright wrote a book called "Finding Ansers in U. S. Census Records. On pages 8 and 9 the authors were discussing the historical perspectives and the point of this particular topic was discussing the accuracy of the facts presented in the various census returns. Here's some quotes which hopefully will put into focus my point about asking the questions. "Another factor that comes into play in the accuracy of every census record is the competency of the enumerator who recorded the information. Individuals were not necessarily well-educated or qualified for the job, and anyone who has studied census record knows that good penmanship was not a requirement." "The United States has always been home to a large number of immigrants, and those who did not speak English well presented still another problem for the census taker. Often, enumerators could hardly understand the information given to them by people with foreign accents. Names were frequently misunderstood and misspelled by enumerators to the extent that they may not even begin with the correct letters, making them hard to find in census schedules and almost impossible to find in indexes." "Whether recording information from a foreign-born or American-born individual, some enumerators took the quickest way to get the job done. Some used initials rather than given names, some used nicknames, and some omitted places of birth, value of real estate, occupations, and other details. In boarding houses, hotels, and clusters of workers' cottages, enumerators could easily overlook entire families." "According to the 1850 census instructions, the enumerator, on completing the entry for each family, farm, or shop, was to read the information back to the person interrogated so that errors could be corrected immediately. But if the informant was unclear or incorrect in giving information in the first place, this procedure did little to correct errors. A significant portion of the American population could not read or write in the 19th Century, so if an enumerator misspelled the family surname it could easily have stayed that way, whether or not it was repeated by the enumerator." In defense of my statement that enumerators weren't "allowed" to ask, and the subsequent statement about whether my "rule" was fact or fiction, I can only state that I've been doing genealogy since the 1970s and in the 1980s to now I started attending seminars and census classes over the years and many of the instructors either flat out stated, or hinted that asking how to spelling a name was a forbidden question because it was felt that asking the question about spelling would embarrass those responders who couldn't read or write and only signed their names with an "X" or were foreigners and so any spelling of their name would have been using the letters pronounced in their native tongue which would not come across correctly into the English language. For example, the "W" in a German language is actually pronounced as a "V", so would the enumerator spelling Wagner as we would, or as Vagner as he heard it? Christie Trapp