Tracing your English surname
According to the Oxford Guide to Family History, Oxford University Press, pub. 1993, there were a great many more surnames in use in England in the Middle Ages than there are today. The Black Death and other pestilences of the Middle Ages wiped out entire families, thus their surnames became extinct. Some rare surnames have survived and still exist in their area of origin, but over the centuries names have changed. To trace an English surname back over several centuries can be a difficult task; some family’s surnames changed when they moved from one village to another, when locals identified them by using the name of their previous village or town and not their surname, and after two or three generations the new name became permanent. French immigrants into England will have had their surname Herve changed to Harvey, and Charpentier into Carpenter, making them indistinguishable from the English Harveys and Carpenters. Also, one will find that many English surnames originated in countries like Denmark and Holland. With genealogy being the most popular “hobby” on the planet, many people encounter these name-changes and have difficulty picking up the trail of their ancestors, meaning it can be the end of the line in one’s research, although not always.
In 16th century England, the unusual practice of a baby being given a surname to be used as a Christian name began to become popular. Lord Guildford Dudley is one of the earliest recorded examples of such naming when he was given his mother’s surname as a Christian name. Such naming practices were usually efforts by the nobility to preserve the surname in the mother’s family when the male line became extinct, and it became even more popular in Victorian England. Once only used as surnames, Douglas, Dudley, Keith, Stanley, Stuart, and Neville are now thought of as Christian names.
Some Christian names are uni-sex, such as Evelyn, Allison, Marion, and Hilary. The pet forms of names are another confusion, such as Nancy for Anne, Meg for Margaret, and Sally for Sarah, and my own great-great-grandmother switched from Maud to Mary, and back again, creating a confusing paper trail for her future researcher.
According to the Oxford Guide to Family History, Oxford University Press, pub. 1993, there were a great many more surnames in use in England in the Middle Ages than there are today. The Black Death and other pestilences of the Middle Ages wiped out entire families, thus their surnames became extinct. Some rare surnames have survived and still exist in their area of origin, but over the centuries names have changed. To trace an English surname back over several centuries can be a difficult task; some family’s surnames changed when they moved from one village to another, when locals identified them by using the name of their previous village or town and not their surname, and after two or three generations the new name became permanent. French immigrants into England will have had their surname Herve changed to Harvey, and Charpentier into Carpenter, making them indistinguishable from the English Harveys and Carpenters. Also, one will find that many English surnames originated in countries like Denmark and Holland. With genealogy being the most popular “hobby” on the planet, many people encounter these name-changes and have difficulty picking up the trail of their ancestors, meaning it can be the end of the line in one’s research, although not always.
In 16th century England, the unusual practice of a baby being given a surname to be used as a Christian name began to become popular. Lord Guildford Dudley is one of the earliest recorded examples of such naming when he was given his mother’s surname as a Christian name. Such naming practices were usually efforts by the nobility to preserve the surname in the mother’s family when the male line became extinct, and it became even more popular in Victorian England. Once only used as surnames, Douglas, Dudley, Keith, Stanley, Stuart, and Neville are now thought of as Christian names.
Some Christian names are uni-sex, such as Evelyn, Allison, Marion, and Hilary. The pet forms of names are another confusion, such as Nancy for Anne, Meg for Margaret, and Sally for Sarah, and my own great-great-grandmother switched from Maud to Mary, and back again, creating a confusing paper trail for her future researcher.
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