Your finding pretty much agrees with an observation I've made many times. Many or most of our ancestors didn't speak like TV newscasters. Nicknames and 'country speech' caused lots of misunderstanding when written down by someone not in the know. I had the opportunity to grow up in the country at the edge of the mountains and heard lots of names, often those ending in 'a', spoken as if they were 'ie' endings: Ednie for Edna, Lydie for both the given name Lydia and a family name Lyda. Just another example of keeping our ears as well as our eyes open when looking into our family history.