Theresa - It is well established that some accents of England merged the two vowels that we think of as 'o' as in 'lot', and 'aw' as in 'law' in some contexts. If you can remember old recordings from the 1950s and before, you will have noticed that some people said "crawss" for "cross". Further, in those accents which have dropped the pronunciation of the letter 'r' when it is followed by a consonant, words such as "caught" and "court" are pronounced identically. Consequently, "Goss" may have been pronounced "Gawss" in some accents, and so written "Gorse", which is a familiar word. I can give more technical phonetic detail if you like, and refer you to the relevant literature, which is linguistic rather than genealogical, I'm afraid. Linda is not quite accurate in saying that a family may not have known how their name was spelt - in fact, there was no "correct" spelling until fairly recently in the history of the language - the concept just did not exist. Nowadays, the "correct" spelling of a name is what the bearer of that name says it is. Hope this helps, Graham On 04/04/2012 06:09, Theresa Goss wrote: > Thanks > >> From: linlamberg@btinternet.com >> To: staffordshire@rootsweb.com >> Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2012 05:25:58 +0100 >> Subject: Re: [STAFFORDSHIRE] GOSS/GORSE/GOSSE >> >> The spellings of names were written >> by who ever was doing the writing, with regional accents, the Parish Clerk or the Census Enumerator would spell the name as it sounded to them, the family would have been illiterate most probably so they wouldn't know how their name was spelt either! HTH Linda. >> ****************************** >> ATTENTION TO ALL:- When replying please remove the details that do not apply to your mail and change the SUBJECT LINE for best useage of ARCHIVED MATERIALS. >> ------------------------------- >> >> ------------------------------- >> To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to STAFFORDSHIRE-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message > > ****************************** > ATTENTION TO ALL:- When replying please remove the details that do not apply to your mail and change the SUBJECT LINE for best useage of ARCHIVED MATERIALS. > ------------------------------- > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to STAFFORDSHIRE-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message > > > ----- > No virus found in this message. > Checked by AVG - www.avg.com > Version: 2012.0.1913 / Virus Database: 2114/4912 - Release Date: 04/03/12 > >