Old Country Houses of the Old Glasgow Gentry

[Rena]

Please don't read any significance into spelling. 'Correct' spelling is a relatively recent concept, dating from the end of the 19th century. Some clerks would write Cum, and others would write Crumm.

Oh but I do.  In the days when a cash receipt from a shop had to record the name of the purchaser my mother would answer  the enquiry as to her name with;  "Mrs Crum".

Those who have, shall we say, uncommon surnames will know there are different reactions.

1)  The very polite assistant/clerk who, using a BBC voice, will pronounce any vowel, Crimm, Cramm, Crom,  but not a "u" as in "Crum"
 
2) Then there's the individual who thinks;  I know what I heard but it can't be "Crum" so I'll scrawl an illegible surname

I do accept that during an age when not everyone had been given a bible from which it was expected they could learn to read, there were deviations - such as my Halliday Shearen family from Norfolk who travelled down to Cambridgeshire, where the strong dialect in 1851 translated the surname to Sharring.

[Forfarian]

Please don't read any significance into spelling. 'Correct' spelling is a relatively recent concept, dating from the end of the 19th century. Some clerks would write Crum, and others would write Crumm.

Oh but I do.

I doubt if your memory goes back as far as the end of the 19th century.

If you imagine that different spellings before then had any significance at all, then you will succeed only in making your research more difficult.

[Rena]

Please don't read any significance into spelling. 'Correct' spelling is a relatively recent concept, dating from the end of the 19th century. Some clerks would write Crum, and others would write Crumm.

Oh but I do.

I doubt if your memory goes back as far as the end of the 19th century.

If you imagine that different spellings before then had any significance at all, then you will succeed only in making your research more difficult.

I acccept;  and I doubt any of us in this day and age will know the exact thoughts of anyone, especially of earlier  generations who lived prior to our arrival on earth.