Question

I am an Everett that in before the 1870s was Everitt and for some reason the clan here changed to Everett, why??

Comments

In a world where illiteracy was normal, only the sound of a name mattered.

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In the last 200 years there has been a big tendency for name spellings to converge - minority forms give way to the majority spelling.

Bear in mind that the spellings you find earlier had no official status and often no particular history.

One factor is that people sent their kids to school.  The teacher had to show the kids how to write their names, and she had to improvise.  No use asking the parents, they wouldn't understand the question.

And people who could read would see a name in print, realize it was the same name as their own, and decide that the printed way was the proper way to spell it.

Nowadays, minority spellings are used by hold-outs who insist that their family have always been Higgyns from the year dot and they have nothing to do with all those Higginses.

Answer 1

SurnameDB.com shows a number of different spellings. They indicate that the 1066 Norman invaders often spelled it "Everard."

Comments

If you look up the Everett spelling at surnamedb.com , there are more details about variants and their locations in England.