NOTE: Over the years, Pace Network has received queries from folks searching for similar or related surnames, including Pass, Pease, Pase, etc. Some of these surnames were changed to Pace after immigration. Now, there is a Roots-Web mailing list for the surname PASS and other similar surnames. Here is the info:

This inspired me to consolidate all the queries I have received on these Pace-like names. I hope to work together with the PASS mailing list coordinator to help with this endeavor. Now here are the PASS and related surname queries:

My Mother was a PASE. Her grandfather was from Germany, settled in Clearfield Co., Pa. and later moved to Thomas, W.V. My grandad, her father, was the first baby born in Thomas, W.V. I am very interested in working on our family tree and any information I can get would be greatly appreciated. Her dad was WILLIAM HENRY PASE, and her grandmother (who was also German) was ELIZABETH MILLER.

Thanks a bunch - Linda Guerrieri

[Webmaster - I responded to this query as follows:]

Glad to post your query. I suggest there may have been some changing of names to American spellings. I speak German and have lived in Germany, and the spelling Pase would be very unusual in that language. If it did exist, it would be pronounced to rhyme (sort of) with the word "posse" as in "the sheriff's posse." The name Miller is English; in German it would be Müller, usually rendered in English as Mueller, since we don't have the umlaut ü, with the two dots over it, but lots of Germans changed it to Miller in this country. The closest I have found to Pase or Pace as a German name is the name Pass (pronounced like the first syllable of "posse". Have you tracked back the census records and the ship records?

Linda responded:

Thanks for your info. Yes, my great-grandmother was Elizabeth Mueller from Germany and my great-grandfather was Oscar Pase also from Germany.....I realize I have a bunch of work to do and I appreciate any hints I can get. They lived in Clearfield Co., Pa. then moved to Thomas, W.V. where my grandad, William Henry Pase, was the first baby born in Thomas (guess they were very early settlers there). I'm new at this so thanks for bearing up with me....

Linda Guerrieri

Roy

It is possible that the two surnames "Pace" and "Pass" are related, but I think it is much further back than 1850. My grandfather lived in Wolverhampton, Staffordshire where he was born in 1893 before he came to Canada in 1923, but all his ancestors before him came from Derbyshire.

In this same book, "Pace" is also said to be English, and was first recorded in 1242 in Devonshire. Middle English shows it as "Pais" or "Pes(e)", Old French shows it as "Pais" and Latin shows it as "Pax" which means "peace, concord or amity". As Middle English it also appears as "Pasches", "Paisch, "Peice", "Peace" and Easter eggs are still called "Pace" eggs. This book also says that a later variation of "Pace" may also be "Pash". Variations of this include "Pashe", "Paish", "Pask", "Paske" and "Pasque". This variation was first recorded in 1253 in Oxfordshire. Middle English records this name first as "Pasche(s)", or "Paske(s)". Old French records the name as "Pasche" or "Pasques" and means "Passover" from the Hebrew word "pesakh" and translates as "a passing over", and was used as a personal name for one born at Passover. Most "English" names came from somewhere else originally.

There have been so many invaders/visitors to that little island over the centuries, so this gives a starting point in time. Since "Pass" seemed to be Jewish in origin, I contacted a Jewish etymologist online, and this is what he had to say "..."PASS", was probably anglicized and shortened from something else. Alexander Beider, in his "Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Russian Empire" lists, i.e.; PASS, POSS, PAS, PAFS, PAZ, PACE, PASCAL, PASCHAL, PASCALL, PASTERNAK, PASQUALI, POSSMAN, PASOWITZ, PASOWSKI, PASMAN, and PASSMAN as variants of the same name, from the Yiddish word meaning "belt, girdle, strip, strap, or line", and frequently belonged to ethnic Germans who migrated to Russia, Latvia, Estonia, Belorus and Lithuania. Add the suffix "owitz" or "ski" to any of them in Poland and you have a couple of the Slavic equivalents. In his volume on the Kingdom of Poland at p. 339, he finds the same PAS surname plus PASOWSKI commonly in the districts of Konskie, Sandomierz, Jedrzejow, and Warsaw.

In the early 20th century, this surname was particularly concentrated around Dvinsk Latvia. (Page 443.) In the magazine AVOTAYNU, he advertises that for a small sum of money, he will send the incidence of surnames from the voting lists to the requester, but only for certain districts, and I do not recall if these are the districts. So you might be able to discover the given names of the PAS and PASS folks in, say, 1907, that way. Men over 21 only, of course.

Some PASS lines are related to the Germans who were imported in the late 1600 and early 1700s, rather than the Irish. One of the great problems with genealogy is that nothing stays where you think it should. There are Jews with non-Jewish names, and Christians with Jewish names. The fact is that relatively few names were originally one or the other, and those that were have managed to get mixed up by conversions and intermarriages. Given names are an even less reliable guide, as many fundamentalist Protestants named their children for Old Testament characters. However, my recollection is that Jews were not officially allowed to reside in England from 1290 to 1650, Cromwell having changed the rules. So I would not think that there would be very many of them there by 1702, and I would suspect that most of them came from Spain to France, then crossed the channel with the Huguenots when Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, which I believe was in the 1670s. Some who fled France at that time when to Holland, then came to England with William and Mary in 1688 or just after."

Anyway, the year (1230) that "Pass" first appears in the Pipe Rolls of Nottinghamshire (see above) is 60 years prior to the date that the Jews were "officially" allowed to reside in England (1290) by Cromwell. "Pace" appears twelve years after this date and "Pash" twenty-three years after it. We all know that people immigrate places "unofficially", and at that time I doubt there were records kept of who came into the country from abroad. A huge leap of logic then suggests (I'm assuming here, okay????) that it is possible that the name was originally Jewish and that some of those living "unofficially" in England with this name converted to Christianity. Sixty years could easily comprise at least three generations (and twenty-three would allow at least one, while twelve is a much slimmer margin) and perhaps these were therefore allowed to remain in England while their Jewish cousins were not. This also might account for the further spread of (at least) the surname Pass to other countries where they were forced to go. I know this is not a very "scientific" method of discovery, but it does fit with the history of the time and is a logical possibility of why this surname suddenly appears in England at this time.

Interestingly enough, the surname "de Pass" (which is probably French Huguenot in origin) also has survived in England. One prominent "de Pass" in England is Commander Robert de Pass (of the Royal Navy), whose wife Phillipa is an extra lady of the bedchamber to Queen Elizabeth II. As an added point of interest, she is simply listed as Mrs. Pass in official records. I wonder why. Their names appears in Diana's autobiography as written by Andrew Morton. In this book, their son Philip was said to have been prominent in the match-making between Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer. I have done wild-card searches for e-mail addresses on the surname Pass in Yahoo and have found several all over the world. Perhaps you might find that the same thing would be possible with the surname Pace. It is all very interesting. I hope this all has been of some help Gord.

Happy Ancestor hunting