Jane Dyer is right to emphasize that we should allow for errors in taking the census
information. I have found examples of this myself. It was certainly not normally the case
that families changed their surnames, especially for people of the class you’d expect in
High Street, Tredegar, at that time.
Alan B Lloyd
I've had this on the censuses myself.
One of my family's name was HOLDER, but was found as HOLDING in 1881, But my
father said they were always known as OLDING. I can understand the dropped H
with local lingo, but on checking marriage entries etc the name was
definitely HOLDER. Yet my dad and his brother called her nanny OLDING.
OK, these names are quite close really, but it does show that when the
literacy skills were low, others had to do the writing for them and wrote
down what they heard or what they thought they heard. All you need is a
census enumerator who's a bit hard of hearing (like me) and you could come
up with all sorts of surnames etc.
I have another family in the London area in 1841, the surname was HENNELL
but they appear to be enumerated as ARNOLD?
I rest my case. Best wishes to all,
Jon