The Ancestry of Family Names

I

THE portion of Great Britain south of the Scottish border, variously referred to as England, and England and Wales, is the homeland of a large proportion of Americans, and hence the place of origin of a large proportion of American surnames. Any name originating in this area may properly be called English, but, for the lack of a better word, it is also necessary to use the adjective English in reference to England alone, in contradistinction to Welsh.

In fairness to the Welsh who are thus called English, we shall make our beginning in Wales. Wales and the near-by counties of England have a style of family names distinct from that of the rest of England. There a comparatively few names provide the identification for most of the people. In the remainder of England much greater variety occurs. A former Registrar-General for England and Wales has put the case thus: ‘The contribution of Wales to the number of surnames ... is very small in proportion to its population. Perhaps nine tenths of our countrymen in the principality could be mustered under less than one hundred surnames; and while in England there is no redundancy of surnames, there is obviously a paucity of distinctive appellatives in Wales, where the frequency of such names as Jones, Williams, Davies, Evans, and others, almost defeats the primary object of a name, which is to distinguish an individual from the mass.’

The area of the Welsh style of surnames comprises Wales and the border counties, or Welsh Marches. The English County of Monmouth is almost more Welsh in its family designations than is Wales itself. Hereford and Shropshire are the other counties where Welsh names are especially popular; Cheshire, although a border county, is only moderately under the spell of the Welsh, as are some other counties of England.

In this district where limited variety of appellations prevails the common names are Davies, Edwards, Harris, James, Jones, Morris, Phillips, Roberts, Stephens, and Williams, most especially Jones and Williams. All of these designations are possessive patronyms — father-and-son names in the possessive form. Jones means ‘John’s son’; Williams, ‘William’s son’; and so on. Most Welsh surnames are patronyms, but not all employ the final s. Owen, Howell, and Humphrey do not necessarily add s. Very common are George, Lloyd, Morgan, and Pierce, which lack it (but Pierce was originally Piers).

In early times the father-and-son relationship was expressed by means of the preposition ‘ap.’ Hence, ‘Howell ap Howell’ meant ‘Howell son of Howell.’ By absorption of the p from the ‘ap’ there derives the name Powell. Other similar Welsh names are Pugh, Pumphrey, Price, and Pritchard; these supplement the familiar appellations Hughes, Humphrey, Rice, and Richards, which have like meanings. In some cases the p becomes b; thus are explained Bevan and Bowen, the synonyms of Evans and Owens.

Add to the above appellations a few others, among which Jenkins, Perkins, and Thomas deserve special mention, and a good half of all Welsh are accounted for. Most of the remainder also bear patronyms, and the rest largely bear appellations peculiar to the area, like Bebb, Colley, Ryder, and Wynne.

II

With the passage of time the common Welsh designations have come to be used throughout central England, especially the Thames Valley. But there they are not nearly so common, and directories are far more variegated than in Wales. In what we may call the main part of England, extending from Kent in the southeast westward through Hampshire and northward through the Midlands, patronyms are common but not highly frequent, and show more variety than they do in Wales. These various patronyms generally end in s. Besides, many other types of names find favor. Occupational designations like Smith, Taylor (tailor), Wright, Clark (clerk), and Cook are also common. So too are the color names, Brown, White, Black, Gray, Green, and Read (red), and a host of other appellations which originally designated the bearer’s appearance or characteristics. Then there are fanciful cognomens like King, Lamb, Payne (pagan), Rose, and Wild. Indefinite designations of locality such as Wood, Marsh, Lee (lea), Hill, and Ford also occur. More specific place names such as Bradford, Bradbury, Burton, Kirkham, and Kirkland, most of which have only a few bearers, are also used.

In this main part of England there are not only more types of names but more rare names than in Wales, and the bearers of these rare designations mount up to 20 per cent of the population, or nearly three times the percentage they constitute in the Welsh area.

As might be expected, the variety of nomenclature in the main part of England increases in all directions from Wales. It is great in the Midlands, which form the northern part of the area, fairly pronounced in the east, and great in the south, particularly in Kent, the most southeasterly county. Only in the extreme southwest, however, does variety become so great as to set the area apart. From the standpoint of its family names one must set off the Devonian peninsula, extending from Gloucester and Dorset westward to Cornwall, as a separate region. In Cornwall and Devon, where the special characteristics of nomenclature are most pronounced, a good 40 per cent of the people bear appellations peculiar to the locality and individually infrequent.

This promontory to the south of the Bristol Channel is the antithesis of Wales, across the water northward, and is a veritable factory of unique designations. Of the half-dozen surnames having the greatest numbers of bearers in England and Wales as a whole, neither Smith, Jones, Taylor, Davies, nor Brown is familiar in Cornwall or Devonshire; Williams is the only one of the six locally popular. Of some seventeen appellations which are especially widely used in England and Wales and have bearers in almost every county, only four — Harris, Martin, Turner, and White — are more than rarely used in the extreme southwest. Instead of a long list of Browns, for example, a Devonshire record shows entries for Bradridge, Bragg, Braund, and Brayley, Bridgman, Brimacombe, Brock, Broom, and the like.

The boundary line between Devonia and the main part of England is approximately one from the city of Gloucester to that of Southampton. The corresponding boundary on the north, which sets off the northern part of England, is a line from Liverpool to Hulk

In the north, the family nomenclature is somewhat like that of central England, but also like that of Lowland Scotland. A distinguishing characteristic is the commonness of patronyms ending in son, such as Johnson, Robinson, Thompson, and Harrison, which are especially popular there. Many of the patronyms common in the north of England are quite as Scotch as they are English — for example, Anderson, Douglas, Gibson, Henderson, Jackson, Lawson, Watson, and Williamson. Various other appellations are shared with the Scots — for instance, Bell, Crawford, Graham, Grant, Marshall, and Russell. In this area, variety, which is considerable near Liverpool and Hull, diminishes northward, approaching the condition prevailing in Scotland, where it has been reliably estimated that one hundred and fifty surnames account for almost half of the population.

England and W ales are thus to be divided into four nomenclatural areas: a main region and a northern region of considerable variety, Wales and the Welsh Marches with very little, and the Devonian peninsula with a great deal. Patronyms form the body of Welsh nomenclature and commonly end in s. These and other patronyms similarly constructed prevail in the main area and to some extent in the Devonian peninsula, but a large proportion of the people in these two areas employ surnames derived from the characteristics, activities, and abodes of their ancestors. The north distinguishes itself from the main area by a tendency toward names also favored in Scotland, and especially toward patronyms ending in son, which have slight favor in central England and none in Wales or Devonia. Another distinction might be drawn between the areas on the basis of the time when hereditary surnames gained general use. They became customary first in the major part of England and soon thereafter in the southwest, and were the prevailing means of identification there in the sixteenth century at the latest, but were not universally used in the north until the eighteenth century or in Wales until the nineteenth.

The regional differentiations are not as sharp now as they were before the growth of great cities, but they still persist. In many cases the same root is employed through much of England and Scotland, and its variations distinguish the region. Generally speaking, for example, Davies and David denote ancestry in WTales or near by, Davis in England proper, Davison in the north of England, and Davidson in Scotland. The people of the Devonian peninsula make little use of any of t hese names, but they do use the related Davey, which also has some use in England proper. Another illustration: Hutchings is characteristic of the southwest, Hutchins of the main part of England, Hutchinson of the north, and Hutchison of Scotland. Examples of this sort could be multiplied; note one more from the appellations of descriptive type, little favored in Wales: of the Read-Reed-Reid group, Read is preferred in England proper, Reed in the southwest and again in the north, Reid in Scotland.

III

It has been estimated that some 35,000 different surnames are used in England. Probably not more than half of these have been introduced into the United States, but this is not surprising, as many of them are of very limited use in the mother country. In spite of this defect, English nomenclature is rather faithfully reproduced in the United States, and, generally speaking, the names common in England are common here.

In America, of course, the appellations from the several regions are mingled together, but the relative influences can be distinguished. It has been learned, for example, that the proportion of Welsh among the English and Welsh here is only about two thirds of what it is in the motherland — 12 per cent here and 18 per cent there. What we may call central England, the portion of England lying between Wales and London, is also rather poorly represented. The offset is to be found in an increased representation of the coastal counties of England, including the Devonian group. Of the four nomenclatural regions, northern England is the one best represented here. The explanation of these differentials seems to lie partly in a reluctance of the Welsh to migrate and partly in the attraction of London as a city of opportunity having a particular appeal for people from near by, especially in the valley of the Thames, and to them neutralizing the call of the New World.

The English (including the Welsh) are by far the largest element in the population of the United States because of their share in early migration, but American nomenclature has become more largely English than even the English share in our immigration would indicate. Although it is probable that slightly less than one third of Americans are English in paternal blood, more than half of our name use is English. How much more than half cannot be stated exactly, but, allowing for variations and special circumstances affecting certain names, it seems a fair statement that American family nomenclature is 55 per cent English. Part of the difference between the 55 per cent and the percentage based on blood is accounted for by Negro name use carried over from the slaveholders of the old South. This is a bold outline of the situation: —

How does this additional usage of English appellations, this 15 per cent, arise?

Part of it is pure heredity, carried over from Scotland and Ireland, rather than directly from England, and chargeable to English migration within the British Isles. Another part also involves no Americanization, but is due to Scotch and Irish use of English designations. There have been times in Ireland, for example, when the use of English surnames was compelled by law. More important is American imitation of the English style of designation. All names other than English have a tendency to seem queer to us. If they are at all like English names, these more familiar appellations are often adopted in their stead.

Both conversion, which is change on the basis of sound, and translation, change on the basis of meaning, increase the English element in our name usage. Thus Germans named Moritz and French named Maurice come to be known as Morris, a typically Welsh patronym. In like manner the German cognomen Roth, pronounced in German as Roat, may be replaced by Root, an Essex name. Sometimes respelling contributes to the Anglicization, as when Gerber is respelled as Garver and then converted into Carver, which is distinctly English. Changes are commonly suggested by the sound of the appellations, but meanings or supposed meanings play some part. A German Schaefer becomes a Shepherd, and a Sommer a Summers, by consideration of meanings. Likewise an Irish McShane finds excuse for being a Johnson, and a Cleary a Clark. So too an Aarons becomes a Harris, and a Levinsky a Lewis.

IV

To the uninitiated, American nomenclature might seem even more than 55 per cent English, but that is because they are misled by superficial appearances. The appellations Casselberry and Coffman, for example, may sound English, but they are simply Americanized forms of Kasselberg and Kaufmann, strictly German. Baylor and Caylor appear to be English, but they are really Beiler and Koehler in disguise. Even the experienced student of names can be trapped, however. No one can keep in mind all of the 35,000 appellations from which EnglishAmerican nomenclature draws. Moreover, England herself has had immigrants from the Continent and has passed on to us some names which became by Anglicization exactly what they would have become by Americanization. Genealogy offers the only proof of the antecedents of rare names.

No one should attempt to say just what names are English and what are not. There are too many of them; many are included which are characteristic of the country but not peculiar to it; and others have English character without English heritage. It is enough to know the main features of the English name pattern by type and by district, and to know that something over half of all Americans are named in English style.