Thanks for the thoughts Blair. Unfortunately, there is no sign of any relevant wills. I don't *think* Pickstock v. Pickstone is an example of idiosyncratic spelling. There are plenty of Pickstock variants (Pigstock, Pixtock, etc..) and no doubt ditto for Pickstone. However, all the variants that I've found sound the same to me or are tiny variants - e.g. one Cheshire Pickstock was transported to Tasmania and his descendants became Pitstock I am told. The last syllables of Pickstock and Pickstone seem to me to be a different matter with the consonant pronounced in a different part of the mouth, so to me the difference is not just spelling but one of basic sounds. The two names occupy different parts of Cheshire whereas if it were simply different spellings of roughly the same sound, I'd expect to see a mix. (Although my Pickstocks first appear on the edge of the Pickstone area, which is how I got wondering whether there might be a link). Adrian On 17/09/2014 08:00, sog-uk-request@rootsweb.com wrote: > ... Spelling in the seventeenth century was notoriously idiosyncratic: have you been able to locate any original documents (wills?) bearing the names and hopefully signatures. I have seen wills of this period and earlier where the same person's name was written differently, even by the same scribe. ...

Not just consonants - the vowels are quite different, even if the spelling is the same. peter -----Original Message----- The last syllables of Pickstock and Pickstone seem to me to be a different matter with the consonant pronounced in a different part of the mouth, so to me the difference is not just spelling but one of basic sounds. The two names occupy different parts of Cheshire whereas if it were simply different spellings of roughly the same sound, I'd expect to see a mix. (Although my Pickstocks first appear on the edge of the Pickstone area, which is how I got wondering whether there might be a link).