re: Went down the ancestry rabbit hole: Why would someone change spelling of last name?

Also in most cases people were illiterate so they just wrote down something that sounded like what people said. Ellis island was best guess, people moved to states and it was misspelled on census etc . It’s really really common. People would ask is this guy related to you and i would say no he spells it with E or no S etc. Now i now that doesn’t mean shite