In the interest of maintaining a clean working database (which now includes 90K plus persons related to the various branches of the (Waite, Wait, Waitt, Wayt, Wayte, Waight, Weight, Waites, Waitz, Waits, and Watie) families, the spelling of the surname has been standardized to a common phonetic spelling of either Waite or Waites.

Follow up:

This convention has allowed me and those using this website to make connections that otherwise might have been missed. Spelling in colonial and even more recent eras as a whole has not been particularly consistent. In fact, it is not uncommon to come across a primary source record where a given name may be spelled several different ways within the same document. In fact, I’ve seen this happen even in personal letters, wills, and affidavits where an individual doing the writing has spelled their name differently throughout the document…despite the fact that we can assume they knew the correct spelling and pronunciation. This is not to say that spelling is not important but rather we should be careful not to disregard public records where a name is spelled differently than our own but which, when pronounced sounds like either Waite or Waites.

All of this is hard for most of us in the 21st century to understand. Unlike our ancestors we care about spelling our names in a consistent way and are disconcerted to see it spelled incorrectly. In fact, Comcast here in Utah has yet to spell my name correctly no matter how many calls I make. Officially here I am Sue Wait-Langley. All of this is a very long winded way to say that if you would like clarification of the “correct” spelling of your name added to the site…please drop me a note and I’ll be glad to add it to the list below.

1. The family of Lois Ethel Waits (descendants of Absalom Prestley) use the spelling WAITS.