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Well, the data was surely read from a form and typed up, so clerical errors were probably common. My point was just that the education level of census-takers seems to be irrelevant. And the education level of anyone transcribing data is kind of irrelevant, since education does not make people less prone to typographical errors. Anyway I would guess it's likely that people have often spelled names the way they liked to, just as they do now, but now conventions for spelling the most common names are more crystallized than they were in the past.

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- mirfak