Posted on 08/30/2006 6:28:00 PM PDT by blam
How British names conquered the world
By Charles Clover
(Filed: 31/08/2006)
The biggest concentration of people called Salt is in Stoke-on-Trent, as is the greatest number of people called Pepper, according to a new study which maps the spread of British names across the globe.
The number of people with either surname is roughly equal so the reason for this is likely to be that both Salts and Peppers derived their names from people who made pots for condiments in the Potteries, according to the authors of the study, published at the Royal Geographical Society's annual conference yesterday.
What the study of 20,000 British surnames over five generations has enabled researchers to do for the first time is to track the migration of people with British names and to see where the largest concentration of people of that name lives.
Now anyone may do this by logging on to the website www.spatial-literacy.org.
The name Blair, for example, originated in the west of Scotland. The number of Blairs in Britain has grown by 50 per cent since the 19th century to 12,473 today. They are outnumbered, however, by their 27,379 cousins in the United States, who are concentrated in Kentucky. There is also a respectable concentration of 2,581 Blairs in Tasmania.
The name Beckham originated in Walsingham, Norfolk, and although it cannot be traced in Australia, descendants of Beckhams cluster today in Northland, New Zealand, and Mississippi.
A database of more than 100 million people's names in the United States, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and Canada was used to track the British migration.
The authors of the study say that the size and extent of the big diasporas of British people living abroad, such as prisoners and settlers to Australia, and Scottish and English colonialists in Ireland, were unknown until the latest developments in information technology.
The authors have devised a ranking of the most adventurous and least adventurous names. There are relatively few Yorkshire names, such as Broadbent, Midgeley or Illingworth, in the United States.
This may be because Yorkshire has generally been prosperous and not subject to major disruptions such as the Highland Clearances.
The Welsh are less travelled than the Scots, the English or the Irish.
The most travelled names, not surprisingly, tend to be from Scotland, Cornwall or some of the grimmer northern towns such as Bradford or Halifax.
There are, for instance, fewer McDonalds in Britain now than in 1881 and more in the United States, where the largest concentration is in Mississippi.
Richard Webber, visiting professor at University College, London, and one of the authors of the study, said: "The conclusion we've come to is that people think people migrate randomly to another country whereas in fact migration flows are very specific. They tend to move from one part of one country to another part of another country at a specific time — Scots went to Tasmania in the 1890s, for instance, and people from Cornwall to Wyoming in the 1860s."
The reasons for names disappearing extend beyond migration. Researchers compiled a list of "most embarrassing" names, which people have tended to change.
There were 3,211 Cocks in Britain in 1881 — when most were centred around Truro — but only 826 in 1996. Likewise, the number of Handcocks, Smellies, Haggards, Slows, Willys, Piggs, Hustlers, Nutters and Glasscocks has fallen.
Conclusions can also be reached about Christian names. The upper classes, defined by educational achievement, have tended to stick to the same Christian names over time — the top 10 being Felicity, Katherine, Phillippa, Penelope, Elizabeth, Hilary, Giles, Annabel, Alastair and Jeremy. The lower classes, defined by education, are more likely to choose newer names. Tracey or Tracy, topping the list, followed by Michelle, Lee, Darren, Jason, Donna, Annie and Kelly.
The influence of British names extends outside English speaking countries. Nelson and Wellington are both used in Portugal and Brazil — Nelson Mandela's Christian name is thought by researchers to be a faint echo of Portuguese influence in South Africa.
There are many Byrons — used as a Christian name — in Greece. Further discoveries, however, will have to wait for the researchers to widen their database.
Ping.
Heh heh, heh heh, he said 'Glasscock', heh heh.
A lot of Cornishmen came to California as well and could be found in mining towns such as Calico, now a ghost town near Barstow. They were known as "Cousin Jacks" because they all seemed to be related, and a good many were named Jack.
The Upper Midwest is largely populated by Germans and Scandinavians, mostly because the climate is similar to their homelands, and because so many of them were farmers and land was free for the homesteading in the latter 19th century.
I'm sure there are other ethnic pockets around the country that can tie their existence to some historical event. Large parts of the Dakotas, for example, are peopled by refugee Germans who had immigrated to South Russia under Catherine and were exempted from military service. Later, during the wars of empire that wracked Europe in the 19th century, the Czars reneged on their agreement and began to conscript these displaced Germans. They fled wholesale and tended to stick together in the New World.
It isn't Cock is it?
400 years ago(1588) : the battle of the spanish armada : England wrested control of the oceans from the spanish, portuguese, dutch, french(re-proven at trafalger, nelson's victory-in-death). Thus all the coasts of the world became british trade zones, the english language naturally followed. Thus ENGLISH is the world's language because of that long ago naval battle...it's a variation of the golden rule. In this case it was ownership of the oceans as the "gold" and he who owns the gold makes the rules...did you know the Union Jack is part of the Hawaiian State Flag?
Try playing with possible spellings. My mother's maiden name shows up with an alternate spelling.
I may be descended from some of these folks?
I knew a guy named Charley Salt once. He was the landlord of "The Black Bull," a John Smith's Magnet Ale pub very near to the main gate at Menwith Hill Station in Yorkshire, near Harrogate.
So do I....and their are pages and pages of people in the phone book with my name in Vancouver, BC......(I lived there for awhile). It's such a basic name I thought for sure it would be on one of those lists....
So true about Yorkshire. Husband (and therefore I as well) has a verrry British name, almost unheard of in the US.
But go to the West Riding of Yorkshire, you can't throw a brick without hitting someone with that name.
A great tool for genealogy.... Bookmarking it. Thank you so much Blam!!
I've managed to trace my surname back to the Alsace (now part of France, but THEN, a part of Germany) around 1690. There the trail ends.
What's interesting is that the very first one of "us" had the same name I now bear. How's that for a link to the past!
Reagan
You're welcome. You just 'mispelled' my surname a little when you wrote Blam, my surname is Lamb. Now, you know the origins of my screen name.
The Scots-Irish (lowland Scots who immigrated to the US from Northern Ireland) settled thickly in the South. Even Mississippi.
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