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date: 15 November 2024

English, Scottish, and Anglo-Irish Family Names 

Source:
Dictionary of American Family Names
Author(s):
Peter McClurePeter McClure, Patrick HanksPatrick Hanks

The present-day family names of Britain and Ireland are of very diverse origins, though not quite as diverse as those of the United States. Britain has its share of immigrants bearing distinctive family names from the Jewish world (see the later essay by Alexander Beider), the Indian subcontinent (see the essay by Urvashi Jain), the Muslim world (see the essay by David Justice), China (see the essay by Horace Chen), Greece (see the essay by Nick Nicholson), and elsewhere. However, in this essay we shall be concerned with the languages from which traditional family names have been coined in England, Lowland Scotland, and the English Pale of Ireland during the late medieval and early modern periods: English, Scots, and medieval French. We shall say nothing here about Gaelic, from which so many Irish and Scottish family names were derived, nor about Welsh, as these are the subject of separate essays by Kay Muhr and Hywel Wyn Owen, respectively, but a brief mention will be made of the Cornish language.... ...

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