Update on Calden surname

On March 9th, I wrote about my second great-grandfather “John Callinan, otherwise known as John Calden and John Callanan.”

Still a bit confused by the name variants, I was poking around the Web and stumbled upon the below comment.

“People who were accounted for by scribes and church officials often had their name recorded many different ways because pronunciation was the only guide those scribes and church officials had to go by. This resulted in the problem of one person’s name being recorded under several different variations, creating the illusion of more than on person. Among the many spelling variations of the surname Calden that are preserved in archival documents are Callan, Callanan, Caillan, Calan, Calanan, Callen, Callin, Callon, Callinan, Callinon and many more.” (www.Houseofnames.com)

So, I guess Calden, Callanan, and Callinan were not “aliases,” in the clandestine sense.

Yes, spelling variations make sense, but…to me that implies that the pronunciations of the variations would be similar, and the above list seems like a stretch. Of course, the written records would be based on one person speaking the name and another person hearing, interpreting, and spelling the name, so I guess a lot of interpretation is involved—which does not make my research any easier. Interesting though.