What's in a name? Genealogy fun.

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archipirata wrote:
But it certainly didn't used to be the case. I guess a good bit of it comes from low or non-existent literacy but even so the variety is amazing.
Here are a few examples, and these are all from official government documents including census, birth and death records, immigration records, etc.

My grandmother's maiden name was Radosy as well as I can determine but I find it also spelled Radoczy, Radosh, Radish, Rados, Radasy and Radoz.

Lack of literacy is not the culprit in this case, it is the politics and geography.
I am presuming the name itself is of Hungarian origin, the various spellings are a direct reflections of difference in spelling of the same name dependent on which language of the Austrian Hungarian empire was used.
Besides original Hungarian I see Polish, Slovak, Czech and maybe Albanian, and Polish again...