THE spelling of surnames can cause confusion among those researching their family histories.

People delving into early 19^th century parish registers for the first time are sometimes adamant, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that these people cannot be their ancestors, because ‘our family has always spelled Thompson with a ‘p’, and this lot are Thomsons’.

It doesn’t take long for them to realise that before a certain point in history, somewhere perhaps in the 19^th century, nobody cared how names were spelled.

In fact, I have come across documents with the same surname spelled differently each time the person is mentioned.

Researching a family in Cornwall recently with the relatively unusual surname Gerrans, I quickly came across Gerrens, Gerrance, Gerans and Gerens. They were all the same family, and the right people.

Looking into my own family in Devon in the 18^th century, Shimell morphed into Shomill, Schimmel, Shymall and many others. The truth is: you cannot read anything into it.

The other problem, and one which family history researchers generally come across much sooner, is errors in transcription.

I went a long time without realising that one county record office held key documents about my one of my ancestors – they had been entered into their online catalogue with a ‘k’ where there should have been an ‘h’; a tiny error which merely turned my family from Shimell to Skimell, but which hid those records from my searches for years.

It’s the same with transcriptions of census records. Researchers can search on websites by entering the name of their ancestors, yet sometimes they find them, and sometimes they don’t.

How many people have traced their ancestors back from 1911 to 1901 to 1891, then suddenly they disappear, only to reappear in earlier censuses living in the same place.

I’ve heard people inventing all sorts of imaginative explanations for this; searching emigration records on a hunch that their forebears might have gone to Australia, or Canada, decided they didn’t like it, and came home again.

But, of course, they were at home all the time, oblivious to the fact that 150 years later, someone transcribing the scrawly Victorian handwriting of the census enumerator would misread Shimell and enter Trimmel, or Shirrel, or something stranger.

So when consulting any database – whether Ancestry’s census records, the archive catalogues on A2A, Google books, or any other, I always try as many variations of the same surname as I can think of.

And if it’s appropriate I use whichever wild cards are accepted by that database.

For example, searching on Ancestry for someone with the surname Shimell, I’ll enter Shim* in the surname field, which finds all those surnames starting with the characters Shim.

Devon Surnames

SURNAMES are fascinating. They are a family history researcher’s most vital tool to prise open the secrets of the past.

Mapping the distribution of some surnames across the country can also reveal a great deal about historic patterns of migration: where and why our ancestors left their homes to start a new life elsewhere.

Some budding family history researchers are lucky enough to have unusual names, which help narrow down the search.

Others are burdened with the name Smith, or Jones, and can never be sure they’ve found the right Smith or Jones when confronted with hundreds of them.

In Devon there are surnames which are also common elsewhere, and others found virtually nowhere else.

The top ten most common surnames in Devon today are said to be Williams, Smith, Wright, Johnson, Bailey, Bennett, Cox, Wickens, Roberts and Harrison.

All of them, except Wickens, are among the most common surnames nationally, but in 1881 it was a different story, according to statistic-filled website britishsurnames.co.uk.

Then, the top ten were: Harris, Williams, Tucker, Smith, Hill, Baker, White, Martin, Taylor, Webber.

While all of these were also commonly found elsewhere in the country, Harris was much more common in Devon, and Tucker and Webber were found in huge numbers.

In 1881 there were two and a half times more people with the surname Harris in Devon than the national average. If your name was Harris, you shared it with almost 4,000 other people.

Tuckers were 10 times more common and Webbers were 13 times more common than in the rest of Britain.

The top ten 1881 surnames found more often in Devon than anywhere else – some of the real historic Devon names – were: Damerell (Ringmore), Greep (Cornwood), Cruze (Frithelstock), Retter (Talaton), Dodridge (Stoke Damerel), Foxworthy (Paignton), Sellek (Colaton Raleigh), Holberton, Stabb (Berry Pomeroy) and Satterly (Ashburton), with the places in which they were most concentrated in brackets. All were roughly 40 times more common here than the national average.

Each town and village also had its own concentrations of surnames. In Tiverton the most common surname in 1881 was Davey, shared by 110 people, closely followed by Wood, Baker and Tucker.

Cullompton had 41 people with the surname Baker, and almost as many with White, Brooks and James, while Crediton’s most frequent surname was Elston, shared by 104 people and an astonishing 372 times more common there than the national average. Lee, Burridge and Steer were the next most frequently found.

The surnames which were found most frequently in Tiverton than anywhere else in the country in 1881 include: Chanin, Purrington, Grater, Kibbey, Eastmond, Woodbury and Bidgood.

In Crediton the same included: Manor, Bucher, Setter, Elston and Layne. While Cullompton had Force, Bivens, Rutley, Denner and Mondy.

Further information about surnames in Devon can be found on the following websites.

www.britishsurnames.co.uk

http://genuki.cs.ncl.ac.uk/DEV/DevonSurnames/

This website creates maps showing the distribution of particular surnames in either 1881 or 1998: www.nationaltrustnames.org.uk/

Richard Shimell offers a family history research service specialising in Devon, Somerset and Cornwall, and can be contacted by email rs@kennet.eclipse.co.uk