A Conversation for CELTIC DEVON

What's in a name?

Post 1

Fulup le Breton

Try this website to find out where your family name is from!

http://www.spatial-literacy.org/

They list Celtic Cornish names! Should they list Celtic Devon names to?

It takes a bit of time to get a result you just have to keep trying, use the back arrows, the site gets a lot of traffic.

Bob you are a northener!

http://www.spatial-literacy.org/UCLnames/Map.aspx?name=BURNS&year=1998&altyear=1881&country=GB&type=name

The highest density of my name or names like it are in the Duchy, then the West Country followed by Wales, however it is listed as an English name as opposed to Celtic Cornish, oh the shame!


What's in a name?

Post 2

Ozzie Exile

Fulup,

It sounds like an interesting site - although it was too busy to bring up any meaningful data when I tried. I will try later.

There are other sources of surname data - such as this one.

http://genuki.cs.ncl.ac.uk/DEV/DevonSurnames/index.html

This gives some interesting distribution of names, some with references to Cornwall as well.

For example "Nankivell" is generally found in Cornwall - and just across the border in Plymouth. However in the rest of Devon the equivalent name is "Nancekivell".

From a personal perspective my surname does appear in Devon (and in equivalent records in Cornwall) but unfortunately this doesn't help much as it seems to be widely distributed throughout.


What's in a name?

Post 3

nxylas

I finally got through, and tried putting in my name, but unsurprisingly, it was too unusual to give any meaningful results.

On a hunch, I tried inputting the surname "Black", to see if it bore any correlation to dark, Celtic appearances. Perhaps surprisingly, it was commonest in Lowland Scotland. In 1998, its distribution south of the border was mostly in central and Eastern England, the very opposite of that "index of nigrescence" nonsense. In 1881, it was confined entirely to Scotland and the very north of England, and not found at all south of the Tyne. Make of that what you will.


What's in a name?

Post 4

Ozzie Exile

I have finally had success with the surname distribution website – thanks Fulup!

Some of the boundaries are somewhat odd. Southwest Devon is lumped into a region that includes most of east and central Cornwall, and a relatively small part of Northeast Cornwall in lumped in with North and East Devon.

Therefore you do not get simple distributions by county, which I find somewhat surprising. There must be a logical reason but I have not trawled through the verbiage on the site to understand why.

However, the split provides interesting information in other ways.

There are a number of names that are (say) common in Western Cornwall (such as my aforementioned “Nankivell”*) that are more infrequent further east (even within Cornwall) and decline further as you head east into Devon. [* Sadly the database does not seem to have a record of “Nancekivell” and so I cannot test if the reverse is true]

A number of these west Cornish names presumably reflect the language boundaries that existed at the time surnames became common (actually I understand this is relatively recently).

However – it is not always as obvious as that.

Take the example of the name “Pengelly”. Often cited as a Cornish name, but one that I knew is reasonably common in Plymouth. The distribution confirms this, with the highest distribution in the “Central and Eastern Cornwall and South west Devon” region. Interestingly it is somewhat less common in western Cornwall, and in fact it is just as popular in the “Dart/Torbay/Teign” region as it is in western Cornwall.

The same is true for “Truscott”, again a name cited as traditionally Cornish.

“Cann” (which is interestingly described as an Irish celtic personal name, but which is to my mind obviously Devonian) is demonstrably so, with a strong presence in eastern/central Cornwall also. “Snell” is very much a Devon and Cornwall name, and “Treeby” (and by now you can guess that I am reflecting back through names from my school roster) is very definitely from South Devon.

Other names are far more common in north Devon than in the south.

This seems to confirm the findings from the other Devon surname site that I posted – that is that the distribution of surnames do not seem to follow any consistent distribution “pays” but rather each surname tends to have its own unique distribution pattern.

The patterns can show marked regional trends (as with Burns, Nankivell or Pengelly) but within the region there can be distinct clusters – and then the occasional populous outliers.

Does this suggest that a small proportion of our population have been far more “productive” that others over the years, with one or two individuals giving rise to now popular surnames??


What's in a name?

Post 5

ExeValleyBoy

The findings with my surname Bolt do not seem to make much sense.

The 1881 map shows it is mainly Devonian;

http://www.spatial-literacy.org/UCLnames/Map.aspx?name=BOLT&year=1881&altyear=1998&country=GB&type=name

The 1998 map shows it has spread, and there are now a good number of Bolts in northern Scotland, where there were none in 1881.

http://www.spatial-literacy.org/UCLnames/Map2.aspx?name=BOLT&year=1881&altyear=1998&country=GB&type=name

Most Bolts are still to be found in Devon, nevertheless the name is classified as "Celtic; Scottish; Other Regional Northern Isles".

http://www.spatial-literacy.org/UCLnames/Comparisons.aspx?name=BOLT&year=1881&altyear=1998&country=GB&type=name

Who knows, Bolt may have a West Country Celtic root, but the conclusion that it is Scottish is clearly wrong.


What's in a name?

Post 6

Ozzie Exile

EVB,

In 1881 there were Bolts in Scotland - but exclusively in the Shetland Islands. There is then a long gap to Devon which seems to be the only other population centre.

In 1998 the name appears frequent in western Scotland, and still so in Shetland - but nowhere else North. As you say the Devon version has also spread.

Given the distance between the two I can only assume different genesis for these names???


What's in a name?

Post 7

Plymouth Exile

There is a BBC web page concerning this surname study:-

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4620786.stm

One of the things that emerges from this compilation of surname geography is that prior to the late 19th century people did not tend to migrate around the country very much, but the changes between 1881 and 1998 show how much 20th century mass travel (especially rail) changed all that, resulting in the spreading out of many regional and district surnames. Even so, there are still marked regional variations in the density of many names. This result must add considerable confirmation to the results from regional genetic surveys, especially as the ‘local grandfather’ rule is applied to such surveys, which would ensure that the direct male line had been in the locality by the beginning of the 20th century, before mass travel got underway.

My own surname (Burns) is, of course, Scottish in origin, as Fulup has pointed out, and derives from my great, great, great grandfather in the direct male line. He came to Plymouth as a naval officer. I note that South West Devon and East Cornwall is one of the few areas outside Scotland where the name is to be found in 1881.

Two of my other family tree surnames (Tickell and Lamble) are very clearly South Devon or East Cornwall in origin (1881), although there was also a significant concentration of Tickells in Cumbria at that time. Since then, it appears that the Lambles have spread out to a certain extent, but the Tickells have even made it as far as Argyllshire, but these probably migrated there from Cumbria rather than from Devon.


What's in a name?

Post 8

Einion

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nxylas,

I've always understood the name to be one of Scottish origin, so it's interesting that it was confined mainly to Scotland.

Concerning the "index of nigrescence", it's not complete nonsense; certainly it was "invented" by a man with hair-brained ideas, but in itself it's fairly straightforward. It's basically a measure of the relative proportion of blond to black hair. In the British Isles, the highest relative proportion of black hair was found in a mountainous area of north-west Ireland; this means that either black hair is very common there, fair hair is rare, or else a combination of the two.

The "dark Celts" idea is actually one prevalent among men like John Beddoe (the index of nigrescence fellow). The Romans described Celts as blue-eyed and "white" skinned (i.e. presumably whiter than Romans), although they were "not naturally blond" (they had a custom of dyeing it a light colour with lime) according to one writer.

The dark men (if you mean dark in the sense of brown eyes, swarthiness etc) in much of Britain and Ireland seem to be descended from Pre-Celtic Neolithic migrants. And many of the fair-headed men are probably Bronze Age descendants rather than Saxons.



What's in a name?

Post 9

Plymouth Exile

Einion,

There is good modern archaeological and genetic evidence that there were no successive waves of migrants in the British pre-Roman era. It is now thought that remnants of the Palaeolithic people, who inhabited Northern Iberia (the Basque country) during the last Ice Age, migrated to the British Isles about 9,000 years ago when the climate warmed enough to make habitation of these islands possible again. The genetic record seems to show that very little admixture with people from North West Europe occurred prior to the first Anglo-Saxon settlements in the 5th century AD. Agricultural and technological (first bronze, then iron) advances came about via trade links, rather than by invasions or mass migrations. These early Britons would have spoken a non-Indo-European language, similar to Basque, but would have acquired a Celtic language somewhat later. Genetically, the British ‘Celts’ are almost identical to the Basques, and they are significantly different from the ‘Celts’ of Central Europe, who the Romans described.

Both the Britons and the genetically different Germanic migrants (Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Danes, etc.) would have had a range of physical appearances, from dark and swarthy to pale skinned and fair haired, but with a slight preponderance of the former among the Britons. Therefore Beddoe’s index would only have given a very crude indication of the true mixture of ancestral origins in any location, but nowhere near as accurate as DNA analysis would give.


What's in a name?

Post 10

tivvyboy

Hi there

The site for the names always seems to be down! Well sometimes it ain't! With regards to the areas they are the postcode areas used by Royal Mail. Hence most of Devon is under the EX area with TQ and PL making up the rest, and why south eastern Cornwall is lumped with Plymouth for the name results. The Royal Mail has given us a great postcode system which the compilers of the study have chosen to use.

I my case I have searched through my family names, one is concentrated for some reason in Devona and Northumbria! But I have names in the tree concentrated in the Westcountry and no where else!

To Fulub I'd say dinnae be feart! I went through the Scottish names of some of my colleagues - guess what they are apparently English too! Scottish answer is it is based at the University College of London and so thinks everything is English!!! So Fulub, you're still a Celt but because of a computing glitch either in the softwear or it's programmers brains you are English.

Also EVB, as far as the Bolts go, this may be a case of linguistic convergence ie the same word having the same meaning but coming from two seperate origins, like the false friends between English and French/Spanish etc.

Talking of Spain, it is interesting linkng to Plymouth Exiles comments that in the Seven Daughters of Eve book, Brian Sykes mentions that the descendants of one of the Seven daughters are most common in Spain, Ireland, Wales and the Westcountry. And another daughter has a higher incidence in this area as well.

But back to the names, it is a fascinating study, and it is amazing how names still have a "heartland". And also that in my case, the frequency of my surname per 100000 people is twice as much in New Zealand as it's native UK! Anyone else in that position??

Cheers for now

tb


What's in a name?

Post 11

ExeValleyBoy

“The genetic record seems to show that very little admixture with people from North West Europe occurred prior to the first Anglo-Saxon settlements in the 5th century AD.”

Britain only became an island around about 7,000 years ago, when the land bridge to the continent was finally submerged. Britain had been ice-free since about 11,000 BC, so during the time between the ice melting and the channel forming, some 4,000 years, large numbers of people could have just walked into Britain from north western Europe.

I’m sure many migrations back and forth must have happened during the long time Britain was connected to the continent, so I find it odd that there is such a genetic difference between Britain and north west Europe. Presumably this includes people living in what is now north eastern France, the part of the mainland that would actually have been attached to Britain.


What's in a name?

Post 12

Plymouth Exile

ExeValleyBoy,

It is theoretically possible that some of what we consider to be the Anglo-Saxon and/or Danish genetic input to the English gene pool could have been introduced into Britain much earlier (for instance, when the land bridge was still in existence). If this was the case, then the contribution from the Anglo-Saxons must have been even lower than historians had thought. However, there is a serious problem with this theory, in that there is apparently no sign of any significant infiltration of Germanic DNA signature into Wales, where the Y-signature is essentially the same as in Ireland and the Basque country, even though Wales was not a separate entity from the rest of Britain at that time. Even in Kent and Sussex, which were the areas closest to continental Europe at the time when the land bridge existed, the Germanic Y-signature appears to be no higher than in Cornwall. Incidentally, the Y-signature in North Eastern France is very similar to that in the traditional Anglo-Saxon homelands.


What's in a name?

Post 13

Einion

Plymouth Exile,

The genetic evidence can only tell us part of the story. I think one problem with these surveys is that they are very much subject to interpretation. They can only tell us that there are similarities or differences between certain regions, but not how that came about, so to an extent they are often interpreted to fit a pre-conceived idea.

For example, the similarities between Northern Spain and parts of the British Isles could be explained equally well in quite a different way. Firstly, there were the Upper Palaeolithic men, who settled western Europe in general; then various groups travelled along the Mediterranean to Spain and then went north, reaching the British Isles either by sailing from Spain or travelling through France (or both). I believe this is consistent with the archaeological record, and indeed with the historical; Irish legends claim that a few different waves of migration occured from Spain.

After the Neolithic, the "food vessel" culture appeared in Northern Spain and then Ireland. Accompanied by these new artifacts are burials containing (and I don't mean to be morbid, but) skeletons of a distinctly different phenotype from the preceding Neolithic people. I think the best way to explain this is that a new people had entered; but the question remains as to how many arrived. Judging from various pieces of evidence, I'd say that most of these migrations probably involved a relatively small minority of newcomers to natives.

But many of the Neolithic and Bronze Age people who settled elsewhere in Europe (such as the center, east and the north) were probably different from those who settled Spain and the British Isles.

Concerning the Celts, Roman descriptions I mentioned earlier were also of the Gauls (all over France). They claimed that the Gauls were closely related, in appearance and language, to the British and Irish Celts.
At first glance, this might seem to contradict the genetic surveys, but if we look at the nature of ancient societies, it's not so problematic. These societies generally seem to have been quite structured and class-oriented, with an upper, ruling class at the top, then a class of freemen who were trained in war (in the case of the Celts, this group seems to have been partly made up of wealthier, more regular warriors a bit like knights, and partly of a sort of 'reserve' who were less wealthy).
Then there was a class of "unfree" which included serfs and slaves, and seems to have constituted a fairly large majority of the population.

It would seem that the unfree were mostly descended from native peoples whose land was conquered and settled by newcomers; but instead of booting the natives of the land, the newcomers settled on as yet uncultivated ground, leaving the natives to continue using their own soil, but as estates of the newcomers' aristocracy. So the freemen and upper classes were probably descended from the original Celts (or else a mixture of Celts and a preceding group which had conquered yet earlier natives).
Another point is that marriage usually occured between members of the same class, which would mean that if the invaders looked distinctly different from the natives, then the free classes would have retained their distinctive appearance for hundreds of years or more.

So the Gauls and Britons described by Romans were the fighting men, and therefore are likely to have been descended mostly from the original Celtic invaders. This would explain why Roman descriptions of Gauls would not necessarily be a good representative description of the modern French. It also means that Roman claims on Continental Celts being closely related to the Insular do not need to be discarded, since they were describing the ruling classes and the fighting men. The majority then of the population in Britain and the former Celtic regions of Europe would be descended from pre-Celtic populations who could well have been quite different from one another genetically.



You mention a genetic survey of France which sounds very interesting. Do you have any links to websites where I could see some information on that?








What's in a name?

Post 14

Plymouth Exile

Einion,

It is of course possible that successive waves of people came to the British Isles via the Iberian Peninsula, but if they did, they must have all been genetically the same. If they had been genetically different from each other, a mixture of different Y-Chromosome Haplogroups would be apparent in the current male population of Western Ireland (the region least affected by recent settlements). In actual fact, over 98% of the Irishmen sampled in this district had the same (R1b) Haplogroup, so any subsequent migrations must either have been from the same (R1b) source, or alternatively there were no subsequent migrations.

The fact that the Romans described the Gauls and the Britons as being very similar in appearance and language is perhaps not surprising. In terms of language, they both spoke Celtic languages, which were rather different from the Roman language (Latin). If the Gauls were genetically similar to the Angles and Saxons of North West Germany and Denmark (as indicated by Rosser et al), then their physical appearance would have been very similar to that of the Britons, despite being genetically perceptively different. Even today, it is virtually impossible to separate out Irish or Welsh from a mixed group of men also containing East Anglians and men from the East Riding of Yorkshire from physical appearance only, and yet we know that the former two, on the one hand, and the latter two, on the other hand, are genetically clearly distinguishable from each other.

I know of no specific genetic survey of France. The example I gave for North East France was the only sample from France included in the paper by Rosser et al:-

http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJHG/journal/issues/v67n6/002082/002082.web.pdf


What's in a name?

Post 15

Einion

Plymouth Exile,

Again I think one has to be careful interpreting genetic studies. For example, having seen a few of these studies, it seems that having a certain Haplogroup doesn't necessarily mean people have common ancestry. I can only assume that some studies are less detailed than others, so a larger number of dna markers would need to be studied in order to be sure that certain patterns haven't occured by coindidence in unrelated people.

Some of these large-scale studies (such as the whole of Europe) seem to lack detail. I can't remember a specific instance so I'll give a hypothetical example: let's say 98% of the Irish have the RB1 Haplogroup, but then 50% have some other haplogroup. I'm pretty sure I've seen similar apparent contradictions.

So as far as I can tell, it appears that certain Haplogroups must have been much commoner in particular tribes/peoples (and are therefore useful to an extent), yet completely unrelated peoples could also have a certain proportion of their population having that Haplogroup, simply by mutations occuring coincidentally in the same pattern.


On the Romans, although they claimed that Gauls, Britons and Irish were closely related, they never claimed that these Celtic peoples were related to the Germans. In fact Tacitus specifically mentions a tribe of Picts in Scotland who looked similar to the Germanic people; he was clearly differentiating them from the Celts of Britain and Gaul.

I would argue that East Anglians and Yorkshiremen are fairly similar to the Welsh and Irish anyway. I think that if Danes or North Germans were in the crowd it would probably be easier to distinguish them from the English than it would be to distinguish the latter from Irishmen.
Having said that, there are sometimes subtle differences even between the Welsh and Irish.

But this sort of thing is often difficult because the difference between neighbouring populations tends to express itself in frequencies of certain looks rather than in a simple difference between the people in one place and those in the other. So it's often harder to pick an individual as being from a certain place than it is to recognise a whole population by getting an overview.


Anyway, thanks for the link.


What's in a name?

Post 16

Ozzie Exile


>> Even today, it is virtually impossible to separate out Irish or Welsh from a mixed group of men also containing East Anglians and men from the East Riding of Yorkshire from physical appearance only, and yet we know that the former two, on the one hand, and the latter two, on the other hand, are genetically clearly distinguishable from each other.

We need to be a little bit careful with generalisations here. We know there are differences between the populations, but only in the relative frequency of halotropes. 4 individuals would not necessarily evidence any clear genetic differences.

[I am sure this is what you meant Plymouth Exile.}

I think the same would be true for any two Danes or Germans in a crowd - unless you look for the bad haircuts or if they chose to wear traditional Lederhosen.

The Romans may have defined the Picts as being different from the Celts by the way the dressed or as a result of their customs rather than any deeper genetically driven differences.


What's in a name?

Post 17

Plymouth Exile

Einion,

I think you have misunderstood the concept of Haplogroups. Each individual man’s Y-Chromosome fits into only one Haplogroup. Therefore if 98% of a given Irish population have Haplogroup R1b, it would be impossible for 50% to have some other Haplogroup. Also, every man with the same Y-Haplogroup must have had a common ancestor many thousands of years ago, as Haplogroups consist of groups of related Haplotypes, and each Haplotype represents a mutation within the Haplogroup. Mutations are well-understood phenomena and occur at fairly definable intervals. Thus when we talk about a Haplogroup signature, we are referring to a population, not to an individual.

The Romans couldn’t possibly have known whether or not the Gauls, Britons, Irish or Picts were genetically related to the Germans, as they did not have the means to find out. They could only go on appearance, language, clothing, customs etc., and these aspects would have told them virtually nothing about genetics. Being defined as Celtic was a linguistic classification, not a genetic one. The Celts of Central Europe, who were described by the Romans, were genetically unrelated (relatively speaking) to the Celts of the British Isles, but were more related to the Germanic peoples of North West Europe.


What's in a name?

Post 18

Plymouth Exile

"We need to be a little bit careful with generalisations here. We know there are differences between the populations, but only in the relative frequency of halotropes. 4 individuals would not necessarily evidence any clear genetic differences."

Ozzie Exile,

Yes I was referring to populations, not to individuals.


What's in a name?

Post 19

Einion

Plymouth Exile,

I'm prepared to be corrected, but as far as I know, DNA tests do not analyse the whole non-recombining part of the Y-chromosome. This would mean that if particular sections are analysed, then certainly a population could not be 50% of one Haplogroup and 98 percent of another; but the question is whether they would be found to be of common ancestry if a larger part of the DNA were analysed; the smaller the section of DNA sampled, the higher the chance that a sequence similarity could come about by chance.


When I mentioned the Celts of Britain and Gaul I just meant those who are known today as having been Celtic. It's true that the Romans couldn't have known for sure whether or not Celts and Germans were genetically related, but they came to certain conclusions based on physical traits (and linguistics). Tacitus mention of a particular tribe of Picts being of German origin was based entirely on physical appearance; he says that their red (this could possibly be translated as reddish blond) hair and large limbs indicated a German origin, which is most likely not the case, but still, he is differentiating them from the Britons, who he claimed were similar to the Gauls in appearance (he didn't mention them as looking like Germans).
But there was another tribe of Picts who were said to be swarthy and similar to Southern Iberians.
And again, the Silures were differentiated from other Britons by their physical appearance; Tacitus said "The dark faces of the Silures, their generally curly hair, and the position of Spain opposite, are evidence that ancient Iberians crossed the sea and occupied this area"

Anyway, as I indicated, I think genetic analysis of modern populations doesn't tell us the genotype of ancient peoples who lived in a given region, and who were in all likelihood a minority class in their societies.


What's in a name?

Post 20

tivvyboy

Just noticing the comments on genetics and rembering the subject. All a surname can tell you is where your direct line male ancestor came from when surnames were introduced into Britain in the middle ages. Neither the Anglo-Saxons nor the Celts had what we would consider family names, but instead generally used patronymic systems such as are still used in Iceland with the "surname" changing every generation.

Also most surnames develop from the dominant language of the day, so having an English surname or a Celtic name only hints at the society where in the name developed. Our surnames developed at roughly the same time as those in France and Spain and follow the pattern of patronymic, occupational or location. Which is the same as in these other countries.The major surname origin differences in these islands are from the Scottish highlands, Wales and Ireland where clan origin and of course patronymic names are much more frequently found.

That surnames have a heatland as shown in the UCL study shows populations do not move as much as is often believed.

Does this make sense to anyone?

tb


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