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.
Actually, my family emigrated from there to the Odessa area during the reign of Catherine the Great. The Russians in the area were looking for hard-working German farmers to share their agricultural techniques and develop the fertile ground in that region, so the Czarina promised German immigrants free schools, tax-free land for ten years, freedom of religion, and freedom from military conscription. Thousands of Germans settled in areas like Kassel and Neudorf. Then, decimated from the Napoleonic Wars, the Russians decided that the Germans had been exempted long enough, and began to conscript them. My family, along with most of the other expatriates in those districts, fled to the United States.
So the jump back to Alsace is a double hop for me!
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Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. |
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