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Greetings,
Here is the information we have on the questions you asked.
There is actually a book on the topic of name spelling variations in the late-period Low Countries. (1)
In general, name spelling varied to different extents depending on the time and place in consideration. The key to understanding spelling variation is that spelling was simply a means of encoding pronunciation. Thus the possible variations of a name will depend largely on the variations in sound-to-letter transcriptions, and the variations in accents for a given period. In general, the best way to find spelling variants is to look at a medieval source and see which forms are listed.
The variability of a name's spelling also depended on how familiar it was. For example, a 13th-century tax roll contains 328 examples of the name "David." It appears 248 times as the abbreviation "Dd" and 80 times as "Dauid". On the other hand, the name "Iorwerth" appears 289 times with the following variations:
Iar. 1 Iarward 23 Iarword 35 Ier. 8 Ierword 2 Ioreword 29 Iorword 32 Yarward 3 Yarword 23 Yer. 125 Yerword 3 Yor. 2 Yorword 2
The editors of different lists of names will take different approaches to standardization. Your best bet is to read any introduction and see if the author discusses his policy on name standardization.
If you think of yourself as a person from York who has travelled to a foreign land, it would be appropriate to call yourself "<x> of York." This is a question of persona philosophy. Some people treat their persona as a person who has wandered from England to (say) Caid; other people consider their personae stories to be parallel to their SCA careers.
We don't know what the prevailing patterns of translation are. We have examples of names which are transliterated--Janos, King of Bohemia, was known as "Jean de Boheme" in France. On the other hand, there were attempts to record names as they were heard, although these produce surprising results--a Welshman named "Llywellyn" is listed in French records as "Blewelin." Although we don't have definite statistics, the familiarity of a name would be likely to determine whether it was transliterated or translated.
It was normal for bynames to change depending on the circumstance, Generally, we would expect that "David the Welshman" would be called something else in Wales. This won't always be the case though; descriptive terms eventually became fixed surnames, and some descriptive names might "stick" more tightly to the people who recieve them. We don't have the data to say more than that.
We hope this has been helpful. We appreciate your thought-provoking questions, and we'll be happy to continue working with you.
Tangwystl verch Morgant Glasvryn, Arval D'Espas Nord, Rouland Carre, Effric neyn Kenyeoch vc Ralte, Walraven van Nijmege, and Zenobia Naphtali contributed to this letter.
In service,
Alan Fairfax
Academy of S. Gabriel
(1) Roelandts & Meertens, "Nederlandse Familienamen in Historisch Perspectief" (1951).