The Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social StructureKevin Schürer
John Leech, ‘Bits from the mining districts‘ (1868).
The John Leech cartoon above, published in 1868 and entitled Bits from the mining districts, bears the following caption:
First polite native – ‘Who’s ‘im, Bill?’
Second polite native – ‘A stranger!’
First polite native – ‘ ‘Eave ‘arfa brick at ‘im’.
Whilst obviously sarcastic, the underlying context is clear. Outsiders – those not from these parts – are treated with caution, if not distrust and open hostility. Yet mining communities, often being mono-cultural in terms of employment, were known for being tight-knit, closed, maybe inward looking, and the stranger of this cartoon was not only ‘not from these parts’, but also clearly socially distant judging from the way he is dressed. Yet, how wide-ranging were such notions of xenophobia – literally fear of strangers – in the past?
In an earlier post in this series it was demonstrated that, contrary to popular belief, migration was relatively commonplace in pre-industrial England. Most of this migration, however, was relatively localised, often occurring within regions or territories. Yet to what extent do local migration patterns indicate the existence of regionalism, or what the historian Charles Phythian-Adams has termed ‘cultural provinces’ – a geographical area which the people of the past identified with, and towards which they felt a sense of belonging?
Surnames as a source
One possible way in which the concept of regionalism in the past might be explored is through the examination of surnames. The process of giving individuals a hereditary surname, passed from generation to generation from the male line, started to spread quite rapidly in England in the 12th century and become virtually complete by the early 15th century.
Whilst many if not most historical documents post-1500 which record details of individuals provide information on surnames, to gain a comprehensive picture of how surnames vary by geographical location, one needs to turn to the 19th-century censuses, which record names, residence, and place of birth for every individual and place in the country.
The 1881 census of England and Wales suggests that the surname pool was relatively large – there were approximately 40,000 surnames in 1881 – however, the majority of these could be placed into one of three dominant categories:
- Occupational: those derived from a form of work (Smith, Taylor, Butcher);
- Toponymic: these include topographical names indicating landscape features (Wood, Green, Thorpe, Hill) as well habitational surnames derived from a specific location (Windsor, Claydon, Devon);
- Patronymic or Matronymic – those derived from a usually male forename (Davidson, Thompson, Jones) or female forename (Marriott (from Mary)).
John Russell, ‘Cook Cooper Taylor and Sons‘, Merchant Adventurers’ Hall.
Other less popular or frequent surnames include those derived or taken from a particular characteristic, a kind of nickname, such as Brown, Large, Short, or those suggesting a certain status, such as Reeve, King, Lord (those working for the King or Lord).
Despite the large number of different surnames, the distribution was (and still is) far from even. In 1881 a fifth of the population shared just 15 surnames; a third of the population some 150 surnames; and a half of the population shared only 600 surnames. Conversely, the 30,000 rarest surnames – 75 percent of the total surname pool – accounted for only 10 percent of the population.
Mapping surnames
So what can surnames tell us about regional diversity? Whilst it is clear that the most frequent surnames can largely be found across the country as a whole, this is not true of less common surnames. For example, in 1881 the names Jeeps and Coteman only occur in the county of Cambridgeshire; Bumpass in Berkshire; Tuffney in Buckinghamshire; Trewern in Cornwall; Trowl in Devon; Hollowbread and Coolbear in Essex; and so on. For much of the 19th century every county had their unique crop of surnames.
Yet in order to understand regional diversity, one needs to go beyond looking at individual surnames. Rather one needs to analyse clusters or groups of surnames. One way of doing this is to take the surnames recorded in one particular place and to measure the extent to which this pool of surnames is to be found elsewhere. This is done for the 9,999 most frequent surnames recorded in York in 1881. The map below shows the overlap between the York pool of surnames and all other parishes in the country, where the darker the brown the greater the overlap, and vice versa.
Overlap of surnames ranked <10,000 recorded in York with other places in England and Wales, 1881.
The map shows a distinct regional concentration centred on Yorkshire, but also running north through Durham to Northumberland, west to Cumbria, as well as south to Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire, but barely crossing over to west of the Pennines. Likewise, a similar map for the top surnames found in Ely displays a distinct East Anglian concentration:
Overlap of surnames ranked <10,000 recorded in Ely with other places in England and Wales, 1881.
The regional pattern of Ely surnames is even more marked when one considers less frequently recorded surnames (those ranked 10,000+), which shows a relative tight concentration around the Fens, but also interestingly pockets of similar names in large urban centres such as London and Birmingham, as well as a number of Lancashire towns, suggesting targeted migration away from the Fenland heartlands.
Overlap of surnames ranked 10,000+ recorded in Ely with other places in England and Wales, 1881.
Looking at the geographical distribution of various types of surnames can also indicate regionalism. Perhaps one of the most surprising and remarkable of these is the distribution of patronymic and metronymic surnames. Mapping all those surnames found in 1881 ending in –son (Johnson, Robertson, Williamson, etc), shows a heavy concentration in the counties of Cumberland, Northumberland, Lancashire north of the river Ribble, Durham, the north and east Ridings of Yorkshire (but not the west), and eastern Lincolnshire. Conversely, in 1881 such surnames were relatively rare south of a line running from the mouth of the Mersey to the Thames.
This 19th-century distribution of –son type surnames is similar to that depicted by the Lay Subsidy Rolls some 500-600 years earlier. Indeed, given that –son names are usually associated with a Scandinavian/Viking origin, it is possible to draw parallels between the distribution of such names as found in 1881 with the geographical territory associated with Danelaw – the places where the laws of the Danes held sway between the early 10th century and the Norman conquest.
Geographical distribution of surnames ending in -son, 1881.
Looking at the flip side of the coin, those patronymic surnames formed by the use of a genitival –s at the end (Jones, Roberts, Williams, etc), display minimal overlap with –son surnames. Such names are very heavily concentrated in Wales, and decline in proportion quite sharply moving eastwards, yet very few incidences of such surnames are found north and east of a line running diagonally from the Mersey and the Thames.
In short, despite all the urbanisation, industrialisation, and associated migration which occurred through the 19th century, the regional concentration of patronymic surnames appears to be little changed over the course of nearly a thousand years.
Occupational surnames
Turning to surnames derived from an occupation, many of these, especially those with a high frequency, unsurprising display little regional concentration, since most towns and villages required smiths, tailors, carpenters, and wrights. However, plotting linguistic or dialectic variations of the same occupation reveal some interesting patterns.
One example is the surnames Fuller, Tucker, and Walker. These are all names which essentially refer to the same job – someone who works in the preparation of textiles, scouring or beating the cloth as a means of finishing or cleansing the fabric. The map below shows the geographical distribution of these three surnames in 1881.
The geographical of Walker, Tucker and Fuller surnames, 1881.
The shading on the map is colour coded as follows: Blue = parishes in which only Fullers occur; Red = parishes in which only Walkers occur; Yellow = parishes in which only Tuckers occur; Purple = parishes in which Walkers and Fullers occur; Orange = parishes in which Walkers and Tuckers occur; Green = parishes in which Tuckers and Fullers occur; Grey = parishes in which either Walkers, Tuckers and Fullers all occur, or none occur.
Of the three surnames, Walker is by far the most numerous (there were a total of 83,001 Walkers recorded in the 1881 census compared to 16,430 Tuckers and 12,042 Fullers), but in terms of location, Walkers predominate in the area north of the Wash/Severn line. Fullers occur in the south and east, and Tuckers in the west. Those parishes in which only Fullers are found are located around the South Downs, western Suffolk and south–west Norfolk, while those parishes where only Tuckers are found are situated in north and south Devon, Somerset, west Dorset and scattered across Cornwall.
It is also interesting to note that with the exception of two areas, one south of the Wash and the other in the Weald, where Walkers and Fullers both occur, there is not much mixing of the surnames in what might be considered to be transition zones. Again, as with patronymic and metronymic surnames, there is evidence to suggest that this broad regional distribution of the three surnames is similar to that of the early 14th century.
Conclusion
What do all these maps tell us about regionalism? Whilst it is hard to be definitive and to draw rigid fixed regional boundaries on a map, through the examination of historical (and present) surname distributions, one can see evidence of cultural and linguistic patterns in the origins of surnames that remain in place centuries after surnames came into common use. This further supports the notion that, despite the widespread migration which has occurred historically, much of this migration was local or regional in nature. Because of this, even today, if a Johnson or Williamson is to be found in, say, Cornwall, or a Fuller or a Tucker turns up in Lancashire, one could be fairly certain in claiming that they are ‘not from these parts’!
Further reading
Hey, ‘The local history of family names’, The Local Historian (1997), 27, i–xx.
Hey, Family Names and Family History (Hambledon, Continuum, 2006).
W. Lasker and C. G. N. Mascie-Taylor, Atlas of British surnames (Detroit, 1990).
McClure, ‘Patterns of migration in the late middle ages: the evidence of English place-name surnames’, Economic History Review (2nd series) (1979), 32, 167–82.
Phythian-Adams, ‘Local history and societal history’, Local Population Studies (1993), 51, 30–45.
Schürer, . ‘Surnames and the search for regions’, Local Population Studies (2004), 72, 50-76.
Sokal, R. M. Harding, G. W. Lasker, C. G. N. Mascie-Taylor, ‘A spatial analysis of 100 surnames in England and Wales’, Annals of Human Biology (1992), 19, 445-76.
