A surname variant is a long term change in the spelling of a name, usually over several generations[1]. E.g. Brymer and Brimer are variants of the same name.
A surname deviant is a transitory change in spelling which may be caused by a clerical error either at the time the record was originally made or at the time of transcription. It usually occurs randomly and inconsistently.[2] E.g. Brimer has been transcribed as Binner or Bruner and Brograve has been transcribed as Brymer on various online census records.
Deviants can obviously cause a lot of problems and result in ‘missing’ records. FamilySearch[3] provide a couple of useful tools which can help:
- Commonly Misread Letters Table – this shows how indexers and transcribers sometimes misread handwriting. For the Brimer and Brymer surnames the common mistakes, in order of probability are as follows. Bold mistakes are especially common:
| Intended | Common Mistake |
| B | R P S |
| r | e s i ei a |
| i | e c l |
| y | g q j z p ej ij if |
| m | w rr ni in iv ev ai ui iu |
| e | i c |
| r | e s I ei a |
- Phonetics Substitution Table – this shows how a name was sometimes misspelled when the record was created because the official misunderstood what the informant said for example as a result of an unfamiliar accent. It was compounded by high levels of illiteracy when people did not know how to spell their own names.
| Original | Letters which might be substituted for the original |
| B | p v bb pp |
| r | rr wr rh |
| i | a e o u y ei uy aye |
| y | i e ij |
| m | mm lm mb mn n |
| e | a ee I o u y ie ea |
| r | rr wr rh |
It is staggering that there are 24,710,400 possible combinations for Brimer and the same again for Brymer – plenty of scope for those missing records to be found! The number of combinations and the combinations themselves can be worked out using a selective substitution table developed by Andrew Millard.[4]
[1] Kennett, Debbie. (2012) The Surnames Handbook: A Guide to Family Name Research in the 21st Century. Stroud, Gloucestershire: The History Press. pp. 49-59.
[2] Ibid
[3] FamilySearch. Spelling Substitution Tables for the United States and Canada. https://familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/Spelling_Substitution_Tables_for_the_United_States_and_Canada : accessed 23 October 2015.
[4] Durham University. Palgraves Selective Substitution Method for Generating Surname Variant. http://www.dur.ac.uk/a.r.millard/genealogy/SelectiveSubstitution.xls : accessed 23 October 2015.
Brimer-Brymer database last updated at 2016-07-02 00:29:43 with 4028 census records and 2856 individuals