Saw your very amusing page on mis-spelling of DATLEN while Googling my own family name - DAPLIN was a very common variant of our name up to the 19th century when things got more or less stabilised (we're now all DAPLYN or DAPLING). I sympathise - you should see what US census clerks did to our American branches. I suspect our mutual problem stems from the fact that both names are meaningless in English due to foreign origin, hence people unfamiliar with them have no instinctive point of reference. DAPLYN is from Norfolk back to the 14th century (firm pedigree) and before that we're guessing. We thought Dutch at one time but the people at the Familiename Atlas van Nederlandse Talgebot project at Leuven say not. My personal best guess is we're D'Abelains from Abelain-St.-Nazaire just south of the French-Belgian border.

Contact me if you like at mikedaplyn2002@hotmail.com