In the previous page, I determined that the Old English source word for the Norfolk Village - Wighton, was wictun meaning farmstead with a dwelling or variations on that theme. I was also able to determine that the Anglo Saxons probably pronounced that word as weechtoon. That pronunciation was very close to a couple of the variant surnames that were common in Scotland in the 1600s, but it was not close to many of the other variant surnames. I decided to research what happened linguistically after the Norman conquest.
The Normans spoke a dialect of Old French that was known as Anglo-Norman. This dialect had considerable Germanic influences in addition to its basic Latin roots and its Roman alphabet. At first, the ruling classes spoke only Anglo-Norman while the masses spoke only Old English. In time, the two languages morphed into what we now call Middle English. This period lasted from about 1150 to 1500.
While a large number of Norman words found their way into the language, and while the sound of the language was influenced by the Germanic and French pronunciations, our interest into events of the time is driven by what happened to how words were written. Writing was confined to the upper-classes and church officials and that meant that Anglo-Norman conventions were used. Since there were no spelling standards at the time, writers spelled words phonetically according to French pronunciation and with the Roman alphabet which had some distinct differences from Old English. Some unique Anglo-Saxon letters were replaced by Roman letters; some spelling conventions changed. Importantly, since spelling was based on phonetics, and there was no standard set of orthographical rules, there could be a number of different ways to represent the same sound in writing.
Here's a chart showing how a select set of letters and letter combinations would be pronounced during the Middle English period.