"Do you spell it with a V or a W?" inquired the judge.
"That depends upon the taste and fancy of the speller, my lord," replied Sam. "I never had occasion to spell it more than once or twice in my life,
but I spells it with a V."
(Pickwick, ch. xxxiv.)
Many people are particular about the spelling of their names. I am myself, although, as a student of philology, I ought to know better. The greatest of Englishmen was so careless in the matter as to sign himself Shakspe, a fact usually emphasized by Baconian when speaking of the illiterate clown of Stratford-on-Avon. Equally illiterate must have been the learned Dr. Crown, who, in the various books he published in the latter half of the seventeenth century, spelt his name, indifferently Cron, Croon, Croun, Crone, Croone, Croune. The modern spelling of any particular name Is a pure accident. Before the Elementary Education Act of 1870 a considerable proportion of English people did not spell their names at all. They trusted to the parson and the clerk, who did their best with unfamiliar names. Even now old people in rural districts may find half a dozen orthographic variants of their own names among the sparse documentary records of their lives. Dugdale the antiquary is said to have found more than 130 variants of Mainwaring among the parchments of that family. Bardsley quotes, under the name Blenkinsop—
"On April 2 3, 1470, Elizabeth Blynkkynesoppye, of Blynkkynsoppe, widow of Thomas Blynkyensope, of Blynkkensope, received a general pardon" —
four variants in one sentence. In the List of Foreign Protestants and Aliens in England (1618) we have Andrian Medlor and Ellin Medler his wife, Johan Cosen and Abraham Cozen, brethren. The death of Sarah Inward, daughter of Richard Inwood, was registered in 1685.
Medieval spelling was roughly phonetic, i.e. it attempted to reproduce the sound of the period and region, and even men of learning, as late as the eighteenth century, were very uncertain in matters of orthography. The spelling of the language is now practically normalized, although in conformity with no sort of principle; but the family name, as a private possession, has kept its freedom. Thus, if we wish to speak poetically of a meadow, I suppose we should call it a lea, but the same word is represented by the family names Lea, Lee, Ley, Leigh, Legh, Legge, Lay, Lye, perhaps the largest group of local surnames we possess.
In matters of spelling we observe various tendencies. One is the retention of an archaic form, which does not necessarily affect pronunciation. Late Mid. English was fond of y for i, of double consonants, and of final -e. All these appear in the names Thynne (thin) and Wyllie (wily). Therefore we should not deride the man who writes himself Smythe. But in some cases the pronunciation suffers, e.g. the name Fry represents Mid. Eng. fri, one of the forms of the adjective that is now written free. Burt represents Anglo-Sax. beorht, the normal result of which is Bright. We now write subtle and perfect, artificial words, in the second of which the pronunciation has been changed in accordance with the restored spelling; but the older forms survive in the names Suttle and Parfitt—
"He was a verray parfit, gentil knyght."