On 26/01/2013, at 9:53 PM, Brian Pears <[email protected]> wrote: : So please don't regard "Carr" as correct and "Kerr" as an error; > in the 18th century, both were equally valid variants. "Carr" > was simply the spelling choice of the first literate member of > your particular branch of the family. There may be other distant > branches of your family who made different choices. To illustrate: When I was younger the actress Deborah Kerr's name was pronounced, at least among people I knew, as if it were "Carr". I might be wrong, but I have an idea that she herself pronounced and wrote her name as above. Trevor