BICKNELL SPELLING
In the seventeenth century literacy was not widespread. Scribes spelled phonetically so there were many different spellings of the same name. The identical person’s name was frequently spelled differently on different documents. As education became more universal, our family name finally settled on its usual BICKNELL. In the 1913 book A. Sidney Bicknell of London, England stated that there were forty-seven different spellings of the Bicknell name. Thomas Bicknell felt that most forms of Bignall, Bignell, Bignold & Bucknell were in no way related to our Bicknell family which traces its roots to the Bykenhulle (Bickenhall) in Somerset near Taunton, England. In A Dictionary of English & Welsh Surnames by Charles Wareing Bardsley published in London 1901, the source of the Bicknell name has two origins listed our own Somerset root and also "of Bickenhill, a parish in County Warwick, 7 miles from Birmingham".