This article was originally published in the April 2002 edition of Soul Search, the journal of The Sole Society.

Don Steel’s article in Soul Search (Dec 1992, reprinted Dec 2001) amply describes the effects of pronunciation on the recording of the SOUL-SOLLEY-SEWELL variants. When researching the origins of SEWELLs there have been occasions when I found the name SEWY in the index. Its appearance, between the mid-13^th and mid-14^th century, seems to be confined to the south of England, mainly Devon, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire. Naturally one wonders if this could be yet another variant.

SEWY, as a surname, seems to have dwindled. The only evidence in the 1881 Census is of two SEWEYs. Likewise a search of the IGI reveals only one SEWY (in 1860) and two SEWEYs (in 1747 and 1863). There are, however, sixteen SOUGHWAYs or SOUWAYs or other such variants, many of them in Somerset. A further search of the 1881 Census for these names results in only three SOWEYs.

All this might suggest that this is another example of the confusion over the pronunciation of the ‘e’ in ‘sew’ – is it sounded like an ‘o’ as in ‘low’?

In the course of looking for the SEWYs, I could not fail to notice the rich assortment of variants recorded in the Wiltshire Subsidy Roll of 1331 (Wilts Rec. Soc. Vol XLV 1989). How did the clerks managed to distinguish which spelling to use? Some lack of uniformity in the spelling indicates that more than one clerk would have been involved. The high level of tax paid by some on the list suggests that these were landowners and they might just have been sufficiently literate to be able to spell their name