John wrote:

: Let me put this thought forward;

: How can Caldwell be an "anglicized" spelling of
: the Anglo "caeld weille" or even
: "Colville" when "Caldwelle",
: "Caldwaellen", "Cauldwell", or
: "Calwell" would make for a better argument?
: Maybe there's a good explanation, but I'm just
: clowning around here.

Here is my respnse: H. L. Mencken is the author of The American Language (1921), available online at http://www.bartleby.com/185/48.html. Whole chapters are devoted to the changes that place names and surnames have undergone in America, as people of one language listened to and recorded what they thought they heard pronounced by people of another language, or deemed more familiar to them. I bet that if you read his work, you will have a better feel why the place name and surname Caldwell, or any variant spelling thereof, likely underwent so many changes. In the lowland areas of Scotland, around 400-600 AD, there was recurring alliances, intermarriages, conquests, and conflicts, between Britons, Picts, Scottis, and Angles. Later, 800 AD+, there were the Vikings, and after 1066, the Normans. This interaction of so many peoples provides a plausible explanation for changes in spelling and pronunication. The Domesday Book of 1086 used Latin, not Anglo-Saxon, to spell Caldwell. The Normans who occupied Scotland may have preferred French spelling (or is it the Latin?) without the w, as in Calduelle, than the Anglo-Saxon spelling, calde weille, which has the w lacking in the language of the new elite. In time, Norman names became Anglicised. The de Brus family became the Bruce family. Muir has undergone a number of revisions: Mure, More, Moore, etc. The Old English of Beowulf became the Middle English of Chaucer, and then the Modern English of King James Bible and Shakespeare. The increased literacy and printing of books probably had a lot to do with bringing about a consensus as to how words should be spelled. The Scots themselves increasingly adopted English spelling and pronunication during the 1600 and 1700s, as Scotland became increasingly industrialized, involved in international markets, university educated, and serving as British military officers. I think we all agree that the surname Caldwell in America derives not from any place name in America (and there are dozens of towns called Caldwell in America) but from migration of people from Great Britain, mostly Scots-Irish and Scots, and to a much lesser degree, from England, almost all with the surname spelling Caldwell. And we can say the same for the Scots-Irish in Ireland in the 1600s. They brought their surnames with them, almost all from Scotland, and some of these were descendants of Caldwells from England. My point, however, is that the origin of the Caldwell surname in both England and Scotland derived largely from the Anglo-Saxon place name calde weille, given to long-standing settlements in both Scotland and England, rather than arrival of a Colville arrival in 1086 or a post-reformation arrival of three legendary Cauldwells from France, or any one Caldwell forefather.