Try as you might, its nearly impossible to understand the accent. Hardly anyone except you and your co-workers. Frankly you are afraid you might catch something contagious from these people. Now you are beginning to get a clearer picture of how the spelling of a name might be changed. Aside from these spelling variations, when creating original handwritten documents, imagine the challenge of indexers who must attempt to decipher old-style handwriting to arrive at their index entry.
Some indexers are better than others.
Indexes which employed a double-entry system experience less transcription errors.