Surname Oddness

preiii · Post by **preiii** » Sat Apr 07, 2007 10:47 pm

Hi all,

found this site after looking around for info on my paternal ancestor Robert England who settled in New Brunswick Canada in the 1790s and supposedly came from Scotland. I've since managed to find a few leads (a Christening dated 1768 in Belhelvie, Aberdeen), but one question has bothered me for years since I found out the origins of this ancestor:

is "England" a common surname for Scots?

Does the surname "England" usually imply that the person came up *from* England, or could someone with that surname come from many generations of native Scots?

I've also seen suggestions that the name "England" came from a Scandinavian word "ing", which meant a low, wet, marshy stretch of land.

I'm just very curious and a bit confused about my surname. Do any of you know of the distant history of anyone with a surname "England" who hails from Scotland? Am I crazy to think it's even that unusual? I'm from the US, so I have no idea how common the name is.

Any insight or entertaining guesses would be much appreciated!

Post by **paddyscar** » Sat Apr 07, 2007 11:01 pm

Wecome to TalkingScot, Preiii [talkingscot]

ScotlandsPeople lists just over 400 births and baptisms for people with the surname England between 1553 and 1906, compared to the thousands and tens of thousands for Webster, Patterson, Grant - so I would have to say, it's not a very common surname for Scots. Someone will know better than I, about the meaning and origin.

Frances

preiii · Post by **preiii** » Sat Apr 07, 2007 11:08 pm

Thanks for the welcome!

That's what I had assumed -- "England" isn't a very common name. That's why I'm wondering if my ancestor came from a long line of Scots, or was descended from English emigrants who gave themselves the surname "England" in order to distinguish themselves from long-established Scots.

Of course, this is all a long way of trying to figure out if I can honestly claim Scottish ancestry!

Russell · Post by **Russell** » Sat Apr 07, 2007 11:46 pm

Hey Preiii

Of course you can claim Scots ancestry and spend the next couple of years researching it. You will be fascinated, intrigued, educated, confused and amused, sometimes all at the same time.
You may find ultimately that you have been barking up the wrong tree and they are actually English but you'll have enjoyed the experience anyway.
Everyone is welcome on TalkingScot as long as their main interest is Scotland and its families.

Russell

DavidWW · Post by **DavidWW** » Sun Apr 08, 2007 8:34 am

Here's the full results from the SP site on ENGLAND

Census 1841 90 hits
Census 1851 96
Census 1861 99
Census 1871 78
Census 1881 122
Census 1891 129
Census 1901 152
Old Parish Records Births & Christenings 1553 - 1854 211
Old Parish Records Banns & Marriages 1553 - 1854 139
Statutory Register Births 1855 - 1906 220
Statutory Register Marriages 1855 - 1931 192
Statutory Register Deaths 1855 - 1956 285
Wills & Testaments 1513 - 1901 6

ENGLISH is a bit more frequently occurring ......

Census 1841 32 hits
Census 1851 83
Census 1861 137
Census 1871 188
Census 1881 269
Census 1891 360
Census 1901 399
Old Parish Records Births & Christenings 1553 - 1854 250
Old Parish Records Banns & Marriages 1553 - 1854 145
Statutory Register Births 1855 - 1906 604
Statutory Register Marriages 1855 - 1931 478
Statutory Register Deaths 1855 - 1956 853
Wills & Testaments 1513 - 1901 9

It's more than likely that the origin of the surname in Scotland derived from an ancestor originally from south of the border.

For the sake of comparison, for a run-of-the-mill surname such as mine, - WEBSTER, the numbers are ............

Census 1841 3130 hits
Census 1851 3486
Census 1861 3672
Census 1871 4067
Census 1881 4314
Census 1891 4612
Census 1901 5039
Old Parish Records Births & Christenings 1553 - 1854 8432
Old Parish Records Banns & Marriages 1553 - 1854 4933
Statutory Register Births 1855 - 1906 7097
Statutory Register Marriages 1855 - 1931 5313
Statutory Register Deaths 1855 - 1956 10284
Wills & Testaments 1513 - 1901 806

David

preiii · Post by **preiii** » Sun Apr 08, 2007 12:47 pm

Wow, thanks for that David!

This gives me a lot to think about.

My materials state that this Robert England embarked from Glasgow, and I made some searches for Robert Englands in *Scotland* on the assumption that if he left from that country he must have been *from* that country.... but now, considering the relative rarity of the surname, I wonder if it's possible that another Robert England -- from northern England -- just went up to Glasgow for the sole purpose of getting on the boat. Ignorant as I am of English & Scottish embarkation points in the late 1700s, I'm not sure how likely that would be. But I did a search for the surname "England" in the country England and found the highest distribution of the surname to be in the region of "Northumbria" (don't know the proper modern names

) -- north of York.

I suppose this leaves me with a couple of options. Either this Robert England is the same RE christened in 1768 in Belhelvie, Aberdeen (which fits in terms of the date as well as the family tradition -- unreliable as that may be -- of a Scottish ancestry), or there is some *other* RE from northern England who hopped over the border and just happened to depart from Glasgow. As I said, I'm not sure how likely this would be -- any ideas?

I'm also just curious to hear from anyone who has or knows anything about the surname England in Scotland -- origins of the name, or some "fun facts" from history. I must say, this is a devil of a name to have to type into search engines -- you can't help but get billions of hits, but they're all in reference to the country rather than the surname!

Thanks again for all your kind welcomes.

DavidWW · Post by **DavidWW** » Sun Apr 08, 2007 1:29 pm

For someone from Northumberland, I'd have thought it easiest to take a boat down the coast to London.

Aberdeen?, - Glasgow would certainly be a possibilty.

David

JustJean · Post by **JustJean** » Sun Apr 08, 2007 1:38 pm

DavidWW wrote:Here's the full results from the SP site on ENGLAND

Census 1841 90 hits
Census 1851 96
Census 1861 99
Census 1871 78
Census 1881 122
Census 1891 129
Census 1901 152

David

Simply for the sake of comparison...and out of curiousity...here's the results of an Ancestry search limited to surname exact spelling of ENGLAND and place of birth SCOTLAND......I would presume this search would not pick up anyone who had a more elaborate place of birth in Scotland listed but still am surpirsed not a single 1851 or 1871 hit..hmmm

76 1841 Scotland Census
87 1861 Scotland Census
83 1881 Scotland Census
91 1891 Scotland Census
114 1901 Scotland Census

Best wishes
Jean

Post by **SarahND** » Sun Apr 08, 2007 2:35 pm

Hi Jean,
I get 59 hits for the surname England born in Scotland in 1851 and 72 in 1871... I think I did the same search you did...? But what is worrying is, when I open the 1851 census results, search again for England, I get 95 results. Looking at them, they are all born in Scotland except 6 from Ireland. That doesn't add up! Same in 1871, with 72 hits from the main search page and 99 hits from a within the census search-- only 8 born outside Scotland. It looks like in the indexing of the 1851 & 1871 censuses (and maybe others?

), the word "Scotland" is not reliably part of what the search function knows about the place field. Very disquieting

Regards,
Sarah

preiii · Post by **preiii** » Mon Apr 09, 2007 4:29 pm

JustJean -- greetings from one Mainer to another!

I've been in touch with another researcher looking into this area and he believes the Robert England I'm looking for is not in fact the one born in 1768 in Belhelvie, Aberdeen, but one born in 1756 in Speymouth, Moray. Apparently there was a spate of people with the surname "England" being born in Scotland in the 1700s, but none or few before then.

Of course, this begs the question: if the Englands were historically English, why would a bunch of them move way up to Moray at this period in history? I know I'm quite ignorant of geography and immigration issues between England and Scotland, but knowing how many southern English people today feel about the "remoteness" of even York, wouldn't Moray have seemed quite far back then?