Surnames

[Tobus]

Indeed, misspellings or intentional changes to surnames are very important to understand when chasing genealogy. Sometimes they were changed when immigrants reached new shores because they weren't literate and relied on the officials to write it down as it sounded. In other cases they were changed to sound less ethnic, or to be less complicated. Many of the Gaelic based names, of course, had to be roughly approximated in English.

A prime example of surname simplification is that of Colquhoun. It's pronounced "ca-hoon". The surname many know today as Calhoun is a derivative of Colquhoun because, quite frankly, keeping the original spelling would guarantee a lifetime of explaining to people how to say it.