Changes of name spelling (eg Winn, Whinn, Wind, Wynne)

[Seelife]

Hi Folks, I have been posting and getting assistance from the good folk here about my family, it has been most useful. At the same time, what I have found is a surname change, often within a single lifetime from (Winn, Whinn or Wind).
I am assuming this is due to those recording events doing the best they could with folk/families that may or may not have been fully literate (ie able to spell/write) their names.
Is that a fair assumption?
Has anyone had experience with the Winn's of Durham/UK) and was this a common issue?
Has anyone managed to find their way through the maze?
Does or did DNA testing help find linkages etc?

Thanks for all the input so far.

[GR2]

It is not until relatively recent times that spellings have become more or less fixed. It is not unusual to find even a very literate person spelling their own surname in two or three different ways. Sometimes in the same document. The same applies to other words too. I have seen a document with house appearing in different lines as house, houss, hous and hows.

[KGarrad]

Just remember: Spelling is an art-form; NOT a science

[degenerate]

Has anyone managed to find their way through the maze?
Does or did DNA testing help find linkages etc?

I've been unpicking a large group of surnames (as listed in my profile at the bottom of my posts) for at least 15 years. Using DNA testing, specifically Y-DNA, is the only reliable mechanism available for establishing biological connections between males with similar surnames. This is because, as others have rightly said, there were no reliable spelling conventions until relatively recently and even then illiteracy levels were very high prior to the 19th century.  As GR2 says, you can find variations in spelling in the same documents, written by the same people.

By way of example,  PALIN / PAYLING / PALING / PALLINGE / PELAN / PELLING / PALAN / PALEN are all established (by me) to be variants of the same name spanning about 400 years (although this does not mean to say that everyone with one of those names has a shared common origin).  In at least one case the name was changed intentionally to match a pre-existing local name.

I am working on another set of surnames with the same problem but have not progressed due to the lack of people willing to be Y-DNA tested.