In a message dated 10/18/2002 7:28:26 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [email protected] writes: > Even today you'll find given names misspelled because the parents > didn't know how it was spelled and spelled it how they thought it sounded. Then there's the opposite situation where a foreign name is used with the correct spelling but pronounced in a way no one from it's area of origin would recognise! Years ago I knew a small girl for several months before I saw her name in writing. I knew her as Kate-Lynn her name was written as Caitlin, the gaelic form of Kathleen, not pronounced Kate-Lynn in Ireland!. To-day variations in spelling and pronounciation are often deliberate (in a search for individuality perhaps?). I am eternally grateful for one branch of my family's strict adherence to naming their sons in a consistent pattern of not only first names but middle names also, without that I never would have found one man recorded twice in the 1930 census :-) He is listed once at home with his parents in Queens, NY where he apparently spent weekends and again in New Haven, Ct.as a boarder, near where he was employed. The census in Ct. was taken three weeks later than in Queens, so he could have been present in each location when it was taken but I think it is more likely related to the census instructions which ask for the names of those usually resident at the address, in this case both his mother and his landlady claimed him:-) GMMcC NJ