Record keepers misidentified enslaved family members by misspelling their names

Evidence

I remember thinking how amazing my mother was, not only for remembering all the details her grandfather told her but for doing so with such accuracy. I even have a recording of my mom talking about Tena, Renty Taylor Thompson’s daughter, whom he named after his mother. She was known as the bossy aunt—as she told all her brothers what to do and when. I noticed that she was misidentified as Lena in the typed version of the 1900 census that Rich had sent me early on, but if you look at the handwritten census, it clearly spelled Tena with a T. Her grandmother, whom she was named for, was also misidentified as “Rena” in George Thompson’s death record, the document that the Connecticut Historical Society sent me. — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 378

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth noting how handwritten vs typed census records diverge — is name-mangling a known systematic archival pattern or a transcription accident?