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Thank you Trish. I never dreamt, when I started this thread simply as an enquiry into possible cause of differing maiden names, that it would lead to such a wealth of information. So thank you to all that have contributed to the story of James 'Howard' and his family

Thanks Kay and Margaret, Brilliant!
I’m sure now that I have James Frederick’s family and the origins of his sometimes used hyphenated name.
Howard-Mann was recorded as their surnames on at least two of his children’s marriage records.
I have no record of him between his birth/baptism and thereafter as ‘Howard’ at his marriage in 1929, in the 1939 Government Register and at his death in 1984.
I’ve had a similar case in our tree, where the ‘unmarried’ father’s name was added before the mother’s maiden name and eventually replaced it

I think I might be getting somewhere. I looked for a possible mother (Margaret/Maggie Mann) in his Baptism area and found, on the GRO Index, a birth registration for Margaret Ann YOUNGS Mann.
Perhaps this could point, as you suggested AntonyMMM, to an attempt to disguise her un-married state.

Thank you Kay99 for your response and all the information.
And thank you AntonyMMM for your interesting comments. I'm probably wrong (happens very often!) but if the Norfolk Baptism record is for him, which did seem likely, then I would have thought that his mother's maiden name would have been recorded as 'Mann' in the Births register?

Thank you Pampoen. Sorry, I don’t know if they had any children. They married in 1949 and so, although not impossible!, it seems unlikely that the Popiels you kindly found are theirs. It pays to never give up though doesn’t it? I've just found a great great Uncle who ‘vanished' and turned up in Australia, It only took me ten years! 😀 Thanks again for your efforts to help.