Blakeley Spellings and variations

Spellings of the Blakeley Surname

The Blakeley Variations ......

Variations in the spelling of the BLAKELEY name have occurred over the years, mainly due to the fact that most people until fairly recently, were unable to read or write (and are rapidly reverting to that stage in a lot of cases these days!) As a result of this, records of births, marriages and deaths were recorded by literate third persons such as scribes and clergy. A lot of variations occurred due to the various notions of how to spell a particular name. More variations occurred in transcription from the verbal to the written due to regional accents having to be translated by a cleric who may have travelled from outside the area and be unfamiliar with the local accent. As an example, with the Northern Irish accent BLAKELEY could sound like BLEACKLY (Blee-ack-lee) This has made it important that all of the variations be researched when tracing our ancestors, not only those conforming to the way in which our particular variation is currently spelled. I have come across examples where variations of spelling have occurred in the records of one person, resulting in his name being spelled differently at birth, marriage and death and also in the spelling of their progeny! I found my grandfather (a BLAKELEY) recorded on the 1881 Census lists as BLAKELY (which was the common Irish spelling) yet on all of the available BMD certificates he was spelled correctly. In this case it could have been because the Census Enumerator was running out of space at the bottom of his form!

In our BLAKELEY Database there are currently around ninety variations and I have listed them, together with the frequency they occur in the Database.