by
Mary Dunklee
Most genealogists, while researching family history, have occasion to meet/correspond with people who insist that they are not related to someone simply because their names are not spelled exactly the same.
This is simply untrue. My own great-grandfather, Charles Lee Van Burnett, spelled his name at least three different ways during his lifetime (Burnett, Burnette, Burnit).
Until relatively recently, most people were illiterate and so spelled their names the way they sounded to them. One person may have spelled his name "Burnett", one of his brothers may have spelled his name "Burnit" and a third brother may have spelled his name "Barnette".
Many times the officials who recorded names in census records, land deeds or birth, marriage or death records were not any better educated that "ordinary" people and so wrote the names as they heard them. If the official did not know how to spell the name he heard, he wrote down a name with which he was familiar. (Example: Bennett for Burnett).
In other cases, the person doing the writing was either careless and did not "complete" the name (Burnell or Burell for Burnett in which the "t"s were not crossed and/or the "n" was omitted) or his handwriting was so unreadable that the name became totally different (Bunt for Burnett).
Until the 19th century, there was no standardization of spelling. There are many documents in which a name is spelled four or five ways on the same page. Even among the educated there was a wide variation in spelling.
So the next time you run into a roadblock in your family research (perhaps it seems that someone simply disappeared), try looking for a differently spelled (but similarly sounding) version of the name…you may just "undisappear" him or her!
SOME of the spelling variations of the name:
BARNARD |
BARNET |
BARNETT |
BARNETTE |
BARNIT |
BARNITT(E) |
BENNET(T)** |
BERNAT |
BERNATT(E) |
| BERNETT(E) | BERNAP | BERNHARD |
| BERNIT | BERNITT(E) | BORNET |
| BORNETT(E) | BOURNET | BOURNETT(E) |
| BOURNIT | BOURNITT(E) | BRUNET |
| BRUNETT(E) | BUNT*** | BURELL(E) |
| BURNAP(E) | BURNARD | BURNELL(E) |
| BURNET | BURNETT | BURNETTE |
| BURNIT | BURNITT(E) | BURNT |
| M(A)C BURNET | M(A)C BURNETT(E) | M(A)C BURNIT |
| M(A)C BURNITT(E) |
**It must be noted that only some of those of the names BENNETT and BUNT are of the BURNETT family.
It also must be noted that not all people with any of the above spellings of the name are of the BURNETT family...their original name may have changed as well.
There may be (and probably are) other spelling variations not known to the House of Burnett.
No one spelling of the name is any more "correct" than another. The way a person spells his/her name is correct. BURNETT is only the most common spelling and is not any more correct than any other.