The Talpash Family
 
Families with the name 'Talpash' were scattered all over Central Europe.
 
Although it is not a common name, back in the 18th and 19th centuries Talpash families were known in many areas of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. But the Talpash families were not Austrian. Some were ethnic Hungarians, Romanians, Bosnians, Slovaks, or Lemkos.
 
Some of the families were Roman Catholic, some Greek Catholic, and others were Jewish. 

Whatever language they spoke, the families always pronounced their name as Tal' pash, with the accent on the first syllable, and the 'a's pronounced as the 'a' in 'ah,' or 'father.'  However, the transliteration into different languages resulted in various spellings: Talpash, Talpasz, Talpas, Tolpash, Tolpas, Tawpasz, Tawpash, 
 - are all versions of the same name!
 
Why so? Well, it was not so many decades ago that:
- all records were hand-written, and 'a's could look like 'o's, 'l's like 't's, and so on
- clerks had little education, and were not careful to record names accurately
- when people said their name, clerks wrote what they thought they heard
- although the sound of the name has always been like 'Talpash' in English, the 'sh' sound in Hungarian is written as 's', and the 'sh' in Polish is written 'sz' - Poles pronounce 'l' in the middle of a word as 'w', so some were transcribed as Tawpasz, which became Tawpash in some parts of USA
- in the Cyrillic alphabet it was always Талпаш

So you see how members of the same family could come to North America and end up with surnames which were spelled differently!
 
Just remember that blood is thicker than a careless clerk's ink.