A Note on the Spelling of Renals
Renals, Rennals, Runnals, Runnalls, Renalls — the surname at the heart of this family history appears in a striking number of forms across the documents gathered here. Others researching families of this name have counted at least fourteen spelling variants in wider use. This page does not attempt to settle why the name varies, or which form is "correct" — spelling of surnames before the twentieth century was rarely fixed, and clerks, vicars and the family themselves often used whichever form came to hand. What this page can do is set out, plainly and with dates, what the family's own surviving documents actually show.
What the documents show
| Date | Document | Spelling used | People named |
|---|---|---|---|
| 11 Apr 1840 | Legal deed of assignment, Francis to John | Rennals | Francis Rennals, John Rennals |
| 11 Dec 1847 | Further mortgage, John Rennals and Henry Mudge | Rennals | John Rennals |
| 7 Jun 1859 | Assignment of the Smith's Shop at Margate, to William Seccombe | Renals | Sally Renals, John Renals |
| 24 Mar 1871 | Three-party indenture, John Rennals, Henry Mudge and James Runnals | Rennals and Runnals (both, within the same document) | John Rennals, James Runnals |
| 5 Jul 1892 | Lease No. 125a, Turf Down | Renals | John Coppin Renals |
| 12 Oct 1894 | Last Will and Testament of James Runnals | Runnals | James Runnals |
| 19 Feb 1895 | Reversionary lease, Margate | Renals | John Coppin Renals |
| 24 Apr 1901 | Death; Grant of Probate | Runnals | James Runnals |
| 1892–1929 | Bundle of six leases, Turf Down and Bove Town | Renals, consistently | John Coppin Renals |
The earliest two documents seen so far — the 1840 assignment and the 1847 mortgage — both use Rennals. The 1859 assignment, only twelve years later, already uses Renals. The 1871 indenture is a particularly striking single example: the same family, in the same document, appears as both "Rennals" and "Runnals."
A pattern worth noting
Looking across the documents as a whole, there is a visible split by document type as much as by date. The everyday, working legal instruments — leases, assignments, mortgages — settle into Renals from at least 1859 onward, and stay consistently "Renals" across the whole run of leases from 1892 to 1929. The more formal, backward-looking documents connected with James's death — his 1894 will and his 1901 Grant of Probate — both use Runnals, even though James's own son, John Coppin Renals, was signing his own leases as "Renals" at almost exactly the same time.
This suggests that by the 1890s the family's own living, everyday spelling had settled on "Renals," even while more conservative clerical or probate conventions preserved "Runnals" a little longer for certain formal purposes. This fits with a note recorded elsewhere in this family history, based on earlier research: that James Renals's branch of the family "appear to have settled on the spelling of the surname as 'Renals' to this day."
A note on sources
Every spelling and date given above comes from an original document in the family's possession, photographed and transcribed as part of this project. Where a document has not yet been directly examined, it is not included in this table.