I changed my name legally from Michael Wardle to Mikel Ward late last year. This blog tells you why.

I've long had an interest in spelling.

At primary school, there were three Michaels in my class. Two were spelled the conventional way, and the other was spelled Micheal. Often peeple would spell my name Micheal, indeed it happened just today! I used to be angry, but I realized the spelling was strange, and it's understandable for peeple to get it wrong.

When I was 14, I went to Austria on a student exchange. I learned German, and was enamored by the spelling, which seemed much easier and more logical than English spelling.

In German you can read a word and know how it's said. To understand English spelling, you either need to learn English, French, German, and a heap of exceptions, or you just learn the pronunciation and spelling of each word as a symbol in isolation, more like Chinese. Words like Wednesday, comb, indict, friend, tongue, through, and business aren't said the way they're spelled. Proper names are even worse. Leicester, Edinburgh, Thames, and indeed Michael are totally confusing!

When I came back, I started experimenting with different spellings of my name in private. The one spelling I was particularly fond of was Mīkl (the bar, properly called a macron, above the i means it's a long "igh", rather than a short "i"). Since that letter doesn't appear on most computers, I wrote it Miikl or Mykl. I tried this on my name badge when helping mum and dad out in their first Subway store. It didn't go down too well! They thought customers wouldn't know how to pronounce it, so I should just write "Michael".

In my current job, I spend a considerable amount of time on the phone. When I spelt my name and email address over the phone, most people knew how to spell Michael, but most peeple couldn't figure out Wardle.

This is also understandable, since a literal spelling would be Wordl. Indeed, my ex-girlfrend's mum Pam spelled it something like that (I think she spelled it Wordle).

First, the "ar" in "war" should rhyme with "car", but it doesn't. There's a rule nobody knows about that the sound of an "a" changes if it follows a "w".

Second, the "le" has a silent "e" on the end, since words ending in an "l" sound used to be spelled with a silent "e" (like in candle).

(Did you know that no word ends in "v"? The same thing happened: historically the Norman English added an "e" because they didn't like the look of a word ending in "v", which is the reason for "love" and "live" rather than "luv" and "liv".)

I discussed this with my auntie Christine who said she often gives her surname as "Ward" over the phone to avoid having to spell it.

I discussed it with my family, who said some other family members had changed the spelling of the family name, but usually to "Wardell".

I read up on our family history, and apparently the name "Wardle" came from either "Wardhill" in Lancashire in England's North West, meaning person who looks after the hill, or "Weardale" from Tyneside and Wearside in England's North East, meaning [from the] valley of the river Wear. I reasoned that since "Wardle" was a contraction of either of those, and essentially a corruption by those too lazy to spell their name in full, and since "Wardell" was still likely to be confused and misspelled, I would go one step further and make it "Ward", which surely most peeple knew how to spell!

I read several books on spelling reform. The one that made most sense was Valerie Yule's paper called "International English Spelling", that showed that English spelling could be made shorter and simpler, yet still quite familiar, by using accented vowels, for instance "indict" would become "indìt", unambiguously showing the "i" is long. That would make the spelling of my name "Mìkl". The main problem with this proposal was the accented letters were hard to type. (I've since developed a keyboard layout for Windows that lets you press right Alt and a vowel to get an accute accent, e.g. í. I find this very handy.)

Another idea is the cut spelling proposal, which basically says you just drop silent letters. I tossed up the idea "Mical", and started using it informally. I used that spelling when entering a competition to win tickets to the soccer World Cup and ended up winning! Not a bad omen if you believe in that sort of thing. :-)

In Germany, I stayed with several distant relatives (second uncles and third cousins). The first family I stayed with was the Lepple family. They were great hosts. One night, I asked them to draw a family tree for me. They wrote my name as "Mikel". I loved the idea.

When I got back, I discussed the idea with frends, who also mostly suggested "Mikel", the logic being it's like "Mike" with an "l" at the end. (Ben suggested "Mycal"!) I tried a few different computer tools to figure out how peeple thought it would be pronounced, and most programs thought "Mikel" would be said "Mike-l", but "Mical" would be said "Mick-l". Another point in favor of Mikel.

I was also somewhat vain. I wanted my own .com address, and both michaelwardle.com and michaelward.com were taken. A whois search showed that mikelward.com was available, so I thought "why not!?".

I bought mikelward.com, and lodged a change of name application with the Victorian births, deaths, and marriages registrar.

My next post will explain the steps I had to take to change my name.