There are some long-time researchers of the Bowe name in Yorkshire who are certain, from studying recorded documents, that the Bowes and Bowe families from this area are not related. [1, 2] In their experience, the only connection between the spellings is when a transcriber for a record added an "s" to the Bowe name.
"One important differentiation between the two families in Yorkshire is that the two names originally were pronounced very differently. Bow was pronounced as bough, or booe. My family members that emigrated to the States in the 1880's still use the old pronunciation... The cradle of the Booe, Bou, Bow, [Bowe] family appears to have been Cumberland." [3]
“The oldest version of our surname appears to have been Boow or Boe and eventually became Bow, and only in recent centuries have we added the final 'e'.” [4]
These researchers have noted the following variants of Bowe in English records: Boe, Buo, Booe [5]
We can't rule out the possibility, however, that in England–even if the Bowe family is largely unrelated to Bowes–some individuals of the Bowe line acquired the Bowes name, and vice versa. The DNA project adds an important tool to this research. We need male Bowe and Bowes with origins in England to help by joining the DNA project.
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1. Bowe, Rennie, The Bowe Family History Website (http://www.bdevel.co.uk/bowe Accessed 4 October 2010).
2. Offline studies of K. Bowe as explained by e-mail.
3. Bowe, K.
4. Bowe, Rennie.
5. Bowe, K., posted comment, Rennie Bowe, The Bowe Family History Website (http://www.bdevel.co.uk/bowe Accessed 4 October 2010), under Data > General > Data & Statistics.