Is surname variation mostly just because people couldn't read and write?

[lisalucie]

I have this in my family! My NANs maiden name was Plimmer, her dad was a Plimmer and his dad was a Plimmer. However HIS dad was a Primmer, as was his mom and her mom and her dad before them (can't get any further back at the moment).

I always thought that perhaps it was how they pronounced it and it then got written down, at baptisms, censuses etc x

[drodgers34]

This got me thinking. The location I extensively study (Holme valley in West Yorkshire) has had a school officially since 1690s and in comparison the local records are very sparse for the area at that date, the chapel of ease being in nearby Holmfirth. You often see different spellings for common local names done differently.
Quite apart from a presumption of some literacy generally, youd think the clerk would be literate and know the families involved

Whats now known as Howard would commonly be written as Heward or Hayward, Heywood.
Heward seem quite staright forward to me as many would have actually pronounced their name that way in the local dialect. Maybe they insisted on that spelling or maybe the clerk was having a lend. I assume family feuds were rife so perhaps some differentiated families in that way too

I also looked at the Holmfirth express in the local library. although it is now defunct it dates back to late 1800s and would have a level of language closer to the financial times today than common tabloids, so which era is illiterate ?

(takes care not to have spelling mistakes in a post critisising literacy standards)

[youngtug]

, youd

 staright


(takes care not to have spelling mistakes in a post critisising literacy standards)

Weelllllll, these two jump out

[joboy]

Whats now known as Howard would commonly be written as Heward or Hayward, Heywood.
Heward seem quite staright forward to me as many would have actually pronounced their name that way in the local dialect. Maybe they insisted on that spelling or maybe the clerk was having a lend. I assume family feuds were rife so perhaps some differentiated families in that way too

I think that the letter W in Howard;Heward;Hayward;etc even before 1690 may well have been influenced because the letter W had a different sound in Old English and Middle English see here;
http://www.fact-index.com/w/wy/wynn.html
I have an interest in the surname TUTCHIN in Buckinghamshire and have got back to the 1590's with that name and the variations are extensive because the U letter has morphed into W
Joe

[Greensleeves]

My maiden name was Sedgwick, a not uncommon name in County Durham and Yorkshire, where they generally know not to put an 'e' in the middle of it.  However, looking back through the family tree I find that in one parish the family was recorded as 'Shedwick', whereas for about three generations in another parish they were entered as 'Sigsworth'.   As we travel further back the name becomes Sidgwick and there it stays until it first emerges in my FT as 'Siggeswycke'.