This doesn't seem surprising to me at all. Pronunciation of names can vary a lot and therefore spelling by some cleric who is not familiar with local dialects can differ a lot too. In my family there are lots of examples but the longer the name, the more potential for mangling there seems to be. My surname of Marlborough apparently began as Mallabar but variants clearly include Mallabourne, Malburn, Mulberry etc. I can directly document one of the places where the name changed from Mallabar to Marlborough/Malbrough. This time was late enough to be on census returns where one brother's family was Mallabar and another's was Marlborough. Another family name is the Cornish Beswetherick. This morphs through many variants including Buswarrick, Boswarthick etc. While this won't help directly with your Pickstone/Pickstock puzzle, I recommend books by George Redmond. I expect the SOG library will have copies. He traces the evolution of several surnames and you'd be surprised at how different they can be. Regards, Irene Marlborough

Mmmm, I find Soundex for Gullick or Gullock really weird as it includes Giles, although one search gave me a couple of Gollig entries which is at least likely. Last night I was searching for a John Close, not finding what I wanted changed to Soundex and received masses of Chant entries. I was looking for a John Close who married a Susan (surname unknown) on FreeReg, where you have to open each entry to discover where the surname appears and if it is Close it may not be a John and the chances of whoever marrying a Susan/Susannah are very low that I gave up after the first 500 entries and that was just one County. From Merryl Wells of Luton, Beds. E-Mail: merryl.wells@one-name.org GOONS Mem. No. 1757 Reg. ONS: Bawtree; Gullick/ock, Moist/Moyst. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Irene Marlborough via" <sog-uk@rootsweb.com> To: "Adrian Bruce" <abruce@madasafish.com>; "SOG Mailing List" <SOG-UK@rootsweb.com> Sent: Saturday, September 13, 2014 11:24 PM Subject: Re: [SOG-UK] Pickstock and Pickstone name variants? > This doesn't seem surprising to me at all. Pronunciation of names can vary > a > lot and therefore spelling by some cleric who is not familiar with local > dialects can differ a lot too. > > In my family there are lots of examples but the longer the name, the more > potential for mangling there seems to be. > > My surname of Marlborough apparently began as Mallabar but variants > clearly > include Mallabourne, Malburn, Mulberry etc. I can directly document one of > the places where the name changed from Mallabar to Marlborough/Malbrough. > This time was late enough to be on census returns where one brother's > family > was Mallabar and another's was Marlborough. > > Another family name is the Cornish Beswetherick. This morphs through many > variants including Buswarrick, Boswarthick etc. > > While this won't help directly with your Pickstone/Pickstock puzzle, I > recommend books by George Redmond. I expect the SOG library will have > copies. He traces the evolution of several surnames and you'd be surprised > at how different they can be. > > Regards, Irene Marlborough