Summary: The paper deals with the subharmonic response of a shallow cable due to time variations of the chord length of the equilibrium suspension, caused by time varying support point motions. Initially, the capability of a simple nonlinear two-degree-of-freedom model for the prediction of chaotic and stochastic subharmonic response is demonstrated upon comparison with a more involved model based on a spatial finite difference discretization of the full nonlinear partial differential equations of the cable. Since the stochastic response quantities are obtained by Monte Carlo simulation, which is extremely time-consuming for the finite difference model, most of the results are next based on the reduced model. Under harmonical varying support point motions, the stable subharmonic motion consists of a harmonically varying component in the equilibrium plane and a large subharmonic out-of-plane component, producing a trajectory at the mid-point of shape as an infinity sign. However, when the harmonical variation of the chordwise elongation is replaced by a narrow-banded Gaussian excitation with the same standard deviation and a centre frequency equal to the circular frequency of the harmonic excitation, the slowly varying phase of the excitation implies that the phase difference between the in-plane and out-of-plane displacement components is not locked at a fixed value. In turn this implies that the trajectory of the displacement components is slowly rotating around the chord line. Hence, a large subharmonic response component is also present in the static equilibrium plane. Further, the time variation of the envelope process of the narrow-banded chordwise elongation process tends to enhance chaotic behaviour of the subharmonic response, which is detectable via extreme sensitivity on the initial conditions, or via the sign of a numerical calculated Lyapunov exponent. These effects have been further investigated based on periodic varying chord elongations with the same frequency and standard deviation as the harmonic excitation, for which the amplitude varies in a well-defined way between two levels within each period. Depending on the relative magnitude of the high and low amplitude phase and their relative duration the onset of chaotic vibrations has been verified.