Chloe O’Shea describes the main ways that family names can change, and how to identify variants
When we are searching for records of our ancestors, it can be easy to dismiss those where the surname does not match exactly with how we are used to seeing it spelled. The name may have an additional letter, be pluralised, be spelt phonetically or in some cases be a different surname altogether. In fact before the standardisation of surname spellings, we may find several variations of our forebears’ surnames.
Some surnames are patronymic meaning they originate from a person’s father (eg Robertson); some were allocated according to a person’s occupation (eg Carpenter); some are topographical and named after a feature of the landscape (eg Hill); some are characteristic of a person’s physical features or aspect of their personality (eg Wise); and others are habitational ie named after a person’s birthplace or place of residence (eg Stafford). Knowing a surname’s origin can sometimes explain a change in spelling. For example, if a person had a habitational name such as Lichfield but their descendants moved far from the Staffordshire town, then a parish clerk would not know the ‘correct’ spelling and might write “Litchfield”.
Indeed, it was only in the 19th century that a majority of our ancestors became well educated enough to spell. Prior to this, the spelling of a name was decided upon by the person who was writing an official document, such as a parish register. This clerk or parish official would make their best guess according to our relation’s own pronunciation. This is why certain regional accents can change certain surnames, particularly adding or taking away an ‘h’ to the start of a name that is followed by a vowel, for example Hackley and Ackley.
There are a significant number of examples of small spelling variations. This may be the appearance or disappearance of a letter, such as Isaac to Isaack. It could also be a change of vowel, such as Wise to Wyse. Spellings may change so that they appear differently but sound the same phonetically, such as Croad and Crode. Names were often pluralised or had the last ‘s’ taken away, for example with Bett and Betts. As we trace our tree further back, names begin to appear more archaic as with Pheasant changing to Fesant. With cases such as these, it can help to speak a name aloud to think of other possible spelling variations. How could a name have been misheard,
