Most first names come from five languages: The Hebrews contributed Biblical names; Teutonic tongues (which includes Germanic) gave us names associated with warlike characteristics; The Greeks; Latin; and Celtic (which includes Irish, Welsh, Scotch) gave us names for personal characteristics and abstract qualities.
Most first names are Biblical. In AD 325, the Church outlawed the use of pagan names (which referred to pagan Gods such as Marcus and Diana); So “given” or “Christian” names, are first names taken by early Christians who converted their pagan names at baptism. In 1545, the Catholic Church mandated that a person must take a saint’s name in order to have a Catholic baptism. By the 1600s, Protestants were rejecting anything Catholic, so they turned to the Old Testament for names such as Elijah, Joshua, Patience, Truth, etc., rather than use the saint’s names of the New Testament.
Middle names (second “first” names) were initially used by German nobility, as a status symbol during the fifteenth century. They did not come into widespread use until several hundred years later, and not common in the United States until after the Revolutionary War, when it became fashionable to use the mother’s maiden name as a middle name.
Individual surnames originated for the purpose of more specific identification. The four primary sources for second names were: place or locational names 43.13%, patronymics (son of) 32.23%, occupational 15.16%, or personal characteristics 9.48%.
I have listed the origins for as many of our family’s surnames that I have been able to locate in the source American Surnames . However, keep in mind that this information is "just that" and should be taken “with a grain of salt”.
Irish or Scotch-Irish? At this point, we know that my Adams line came from Wales. Like millions of Americans, my Boyd and Turner lines come from Scotch-Irish stock, being among the 250,00 Scotch-Irish immigrants who came to America between 1717 and 1775. These people were actually transplanted lowland Scots. It seems that a century earlier, James I urged the Scots to emigrate to Ulster in Northern Ireland. It was thought that hard-nosed Presbyterian Scotsmen could better control the Irish than England’s standing army, but by 1717 the Scotch-Irish were in trouble themselves. A depression in the flax industry, higher rents, severe frosts, a sheep disease, and a smallpox epidemic scourged Ulster. My Boyd line immigrated from Ulster county, Ireland (before 1732) to Virginia.
They emigrated in waves to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, the Piedmont country of North Carolina, to New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, New Hampshire, Maine and Pennsylvania. By the time the Declaration of Independence was written, one out of every ten Americans was Scotch-Irish.
The Scotch-Irish brought an ethnic personality well fitted to westward-moving pioneers; they were religious, stubborn and moral. After discovering that the prime land along the eastern seaboard had been taken by earlier arrivals, they quickly fanned out toward the Appalachians. Their sons and daughters were in the forefront of the western migrations with each succeeding generation.
St. Patrick’s Day was celebrated with a grand feast by Boston Irish as early as 1737, but most Irish immigrated after 1845. It was that year, that a potato blight in Ireland caused that food staple to rot in the ground, and thousands chose America over starvation. Many of those who left were so weak they did not survive the trip; in 1847 alone, 15,000 Irish died aboard ship. Nevertheless, over two million Irish, mostly Catholics from central and southern Ireland, came in thirty years. In all, nearly 4.4 million Irish have come (and are still coming) to this country as immigrants.
They clustered together in eastern cities and along the industrially developing shores of the Great Lakes. Although most had been farmers at one time, because the land had betrayed them they turned their backs on it, preferring to trust their stomachs to wages instead of crops. Many took tough construction jobs for 30 cents a day, and few early canals or railroads were built without their labor.
Most Americans - 82% percent, in fact - can trace at least one family line to English ancestors. The first of five million English immigrants to America arrived in Jamestown in 1607, adventurers and artisans sent by the London Company for the purpose of colonizing. They managed to gain a foothold on the swampy Virginia land. Having survived starvation, Indian troubles, and personal squabbles, they unwittingly set the stage for future disaster by buying the first black slaves, twenty persons from a Dutch trader in 1619.
Could we have an ancestor who arrived in American via the Mayflower? Only further research will tell. In 1620, the Mayflower set her anchor just to the north at Plymouth Rock. The passenger list carried fifty English names. Among them was Browne, Rogers, Thompson and Turner - my ancestoral family names that are already identified. The Mayflower transported English who were separatist from the Church of England. Barely half the company of 100 survived the first winter, but during the next thirty years about 20,000 more English immigrants arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which gradually overflowed into what later become Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Connecticut.
At this time we do not know when many of our Ancestors came to America, but we know they underwent a terrible journey. The horribly overcrowded ships took six to twelve weeks to make the trip and often ran out of food, even though passengers were promised by the investors who financed such expeditions, “salt beefe, porke, salt fish, butter, cheese, pease pottage, water-grewell, and such kinds of victuals, with good biskets and sixe-shilling Beere.” One early immigrant ship lost 108 of its 156 passengers to starvation. Despite their discomfort and other problems, the voyage across the Atlantic Ocean was very expensive. The average Puritan family of eight with a ton of freight spent 30 pounds on the trip (over $1,000 in purchasing value of 1978).
Half of all English immigrants came to American under a labor contract called an “indenture”. This was an agreement, in exchange for passage to America, to work as a servant for a number of years (usually four, but in the case of children the term ran until they were twenty-one years old). Upon arrival to America - “indentured persons” were auctioned off by the ship’s captain to the highest bidder.
There was yet another group of English immigrants who came involuntarily - in chains. Between the years of 1717 and 1775, fifty thousand English convicts, wisely chose deportation to the colonies (for a seven year period) rather than being hung. But before you think too harshly of this group - be reminded that the penalties for crimes (considered minor today) were unduly stiff, with 150 crimes being capital offenses i.e., stealing a sheep, cutting down a tree along the avenue, sending threatening letters or simply standing mute before “one’s better”. For many, what was intended as punishment turned out to be one’s good fortune with many prisoners being transported into a land where felons eventually gained responsibility, respectibility and many even became wealthy.
You see . . your name is one of your most personal possessions.
As psychologist point out, a name can predispose others to like or dislike us. Our family names are the roads that lead us back into our family history, permitting us the pleasure and excitement of discovering the fascinating characters whose blood flows in our veins and defines to the world - who we are.