Hi , I am trying to carry on with looking for the birth of William callen in Lancashire around 1801 I'm going by that date as rough idea of age from 1841 census . As his name may have not changed until later . As I have seen his daughters baptism Ellen on paper and it does say fathers name William callen . So when I see that the birth that was found in Ashton of a William calland may not be him ,or the one in Haigh . Can I have your thoughts on that .

Surname spellings didn't tend to be fixed at that time, so Callen and Calland could easily be the same person.

So do you think he was born callen or calland as is name on her birth certificate is Callen . And would he have been given the document ? Thanks

If he is the one who married Cicely Walker (in 1823) then he "made his mark" in the marriage register, i.e. wrote an X instead of signing his name, as did she, so it looks likely that they couldn't read or write, and would not have known how their surname should be spelt, regardless of whether they were given certificates.

https://www.ancestry.co.uk/interacti...nSearchResults

Yes I understand , but I am going off Ellen's birth certificate where it says her father is William Callen . But I understand that could have not been how their name was written later . It's only a odd persons certificates I've seen where they have done a signiture . But if I am searching for a person named calland and they are a callen ,surely I am not going to find the correct person. And that's what I want to try and avoid

They are both just different versions of the same name. The same person could have been written down as either version at different times.

That's why many sites have an option for variable spellings. Having said that, you may need quite a lot of experience with a site to learn how their spelling options work - some sites will give a lot more variations than others. On Ancestry I don't use any of the spelling variant options, preferring to control the results myself. Searching for this person I might try Cal*n*, to cover the chances of there being one of two Ls in the middle and a N somewhere towards then end of the name!

Names might easily be spelled more than one way within the course of a single document, so don't think of it as a name change - just phonetic spelling.

Yes I understand Its up to who is doing th transcript ,and theresagoodchqncethey may mispell them . Thanks

Hi ,Merry in the earlier post you found a birth of a William calland in Haigh , if this is my relative is there any way of proving that it's him ? And I am now going to try and trace William and cicelys children going forwards in Wigan , perhaps a few didn't survive but it's worth trying to see where they went etc . Thanks

The All Saints, Wigan baptism record is more helpful than most in that it tells you the baby was a second son and also the maiden name of the mother and the names of her parents.

Absolute proof is difficult, but you would need to look and see what happened to the parents and siblings of this William, plus look for an alternative future for the child baptised in 1796. Discovering whether the family stayed in the same place or not, plus whether there were any later connections between members of the family should help you to determine if it's likely this William is your William or not.

EDIT: remember Haigh is the other side of Wigan from Ashton in Makerfield and we also don't know which Ashton William was referring to on the 1851 census.