Jonathan Scott surveys digital dictionaries, surname sources and one-name studies
BEST WEBSITES
Wondering about the meaning and derivation of your own surname is often the first step on the path to family history addiction. The etymology and history of family names is a fascinating subject, but it can sometimes be overwhelming and contradictory information is rife.
Surnames generally fit into one of four categories. Locative names are derived from a place. Occupational names are derived from work – examples include Cooper, Smith and Taylor. Nicknames started out as informal monikers, such as Short and Young. And finally there are those that derive from a relationship, such as Williamson, Wilson, McDonald, Jones and O’Brien.
These can be further subdivided into ‘patronymic’, names adopted from the father, or ‘fealtic’, where no blood tie existed but the surname was taken out of loyalty or to join a group or clan. In England it was most common to add ‘son’ to the father’s name. In Wales it was the custom to add ‘s’ to the father’s name. And in Scotland and Ireland the ‘Mac’ or ‘Mc’ prefix meant ‘son of’.
GBNAMES
apps.cdrc.ac.uk/gbnames
GBNames, run by the Consumer Data Research Centre, is powered by modern and historic databases. Type in a name and you’ll be presented with a colour-coded map. The blue contours show the areas in the UK where the “population-weighted density of the surname is highest”. Using the slider you can see where the name was found in historical censuses (1851, 1861, 1881, 1901 and 1911), as well as snapshots from 1997, 2006 and 2016. You can scroll down to view associated forenames, top parishes in the past and today, “a rough estimate of the probable ethnicity of the surname” and more. The site has statistics for more than 40,000 unique surnames which accounted for 88 per cent of adults in England, Wales and Scotland in 2016.
NAMES OF ENGLAND
namesofengland.english-heritage.org.uk
This is the free English Heritage version of the website recommended by our expert this month. You’re presented with the English flag, which as you zoom in is revealed to be made up of 32,000 names. This gives only partial access to the Concise Oxford surname database, and can be rather slow to load, but once you’re in it functions well. A test in which I searched for McQuillan led to: “Irish: from Mac Uighilín ‘son of Huguelin’, a
