Norman surnames

We all have one common ancestor, ultimately.

But if people share a surname of Norman origin, does their sharing of that surname indicate that they all have a common ancestor who bore that surname or from whom that surname is derived?

No, not necessarily. "Walsh" is a Norman surname, and anyone with that name is likely to be descended from some person who came over with the Normans from Wales - but not necessarily the same person. The Norman surname "Burke" likely point to an ancestor from Burgh, in Suffolk, but not necessarily the same ancestor. People called Deverereaux may have an ancestor from Evreux but, again, not necessarily the same ancestor. The Dillons have a connection to Leon, in Brittany, but not to a specific person from Leon. And so forth.

Even where a surname derives ultimately from a personal name rather than a place name, it still doesn't necessarily mean a common ancestor. Joyce, in the form Judoc, was a personal name, and anyone with the surname Joyce may have an ancestor who was called Judoc, but not necessarily the same ancestor.

Even where a particular family name can be traced to a known individual, not everyone with that name is necessarily related to that individual. People called Butler are probably descended from Theobald Walter, who was the first of the hereditary Chief Butlers of Ireland. But it's not impossible that there were other people in more humble butler positions whose descendants carry the same occupation-related surname. People called Fitzgerald are likely to be descended from Gerald Fitzwalter of Windsor; he was around in the early twelfth century, about the time when the Normans stopped using patronymics (in which each generation carries the given name of the one before it) and switched to surnames (which don't vary from generation to generation), but there would have been other Geralds around in the early twelfth century, and someone called Fitzgerald could be descended from one of those other Geralds.

We're all related to everybody.

http://www.nature.com/news/most-europeans-share-recent-ancestors-1.12950

tabbey wrote: »

In the millions of ancestors we all have since Norman times, that amounts to a lot of NPEs in all of us.

If you are saying we each have millions of ancestors since Norman times, that seems an implausible suggestion, especially when there had been only modest immigration until recent year. While we all have two parents and likely 4 grandparents, 8 great-grandparents, etc., as one goes back, one exceeds the world population very quickly, never mind the population of just Ireland. The reality is that pretty much every Irish person is related if we go back 3 centuries at most. I imagine we each have thousands, not millions of ancestors going back to Norman times.

If we take 25 as an average inter-generational period.

Year Number of ancestors born in a given year
2017 Child born
1992 2
1967 4
1942 8
1917 16
1892 32
1867 64
1842 128
1817 256
1792 512
1767 1,024
1742 2,048
1717 4,096 <

---

At this point, we probably reach the entire population of Ireland
1692 8,192
1667 16,384
1642 32,768
1617 65,536
1592 131,072
1567 262,144
1542 524,288
1517 1,048,576
1492 2,097,152
1467 4,194,304
1442 8,388,608
1417 16,777,216
1392 33,554,432
1367 67,108,864
1342 134,217,728
1317 268,435,456
1292 536,870,912
1267 1,073,741,824
1242 2,147,483,648
1217 4,294,967,296
1192 8,589,934,592
1167 17,179,869,184
1142 34,359,738,368
1117 68,719,476,736
1092 137,438,953,472
1067 274,877,906,944

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

Thirty years generationally would be more acceptable than 25 (bringing about a very minor change) but the population figure/claim (above) for 1717 is incorrect or I’m misreading something.

Person A has 4,096 ancestors of that generation and Person B has 4,096 ancestors of that generation and 4,096 x 4,096 = 16,777,216, one see that one runs out of unique ancestors. At some point, especially in a insular / peninsular / rural area one runs out of people one isn't related to.

Cousin marriage of course helps to massively cut down the number of ancestors at a specific ancestral cohort. Even in case of where the level of marriage is only at 5-6h cousin. In case of Ireland we have higher "runs of homozygosity" compared to other European populations (the next highest been among swedes). This is due to fact that high levels of consanguinity in marriages continued quite a bit later in Ireland (really to the 17th century) and also is byproduct of smaller effective population size (par for the course for an island population).

When it comes back to the original question about Norman surnames. Well surnames are patrilineally inherited by and large, so theoretically all men carrying a common surname could potentially descend from the first man to carry that surname. This of course ignores the fact that you have NPE's, adoption, name changes. Let alone the fact that the same surname might occur multiple times each descended from a distinct first carrier. Of course with surnames based on trades or for example "Walsh" or "English" that's less of case as these are more occupational/ethnonym based surnames and probably have dozens of independent occurrences.

In some cases we do see large clusters in a specific surname, I can think of for example from memory the cases of surname Burke and Fitzgerald, where you can see large clusters of men who group together around a common genetic signature (to be clear it's separate cluster for both names)

The last point is most commonly seen in Irish language surnames where given that they are based on personal names of putative ancestor you can get situation of multiple independent occurrence. Murphy is very good example of this as the personal name Murchadh was popular right up to the 17th century. On the other side of spectrum we know that the name McManus only has two distinct genealogical origins in Gaelic Ireland, unsurprisingly today when it comes to Y-DNA testing we can see both of these clusters stand out and making up bulk of McManus men tested.

Free-2-Flow wrote: »

I believe my Surname Russell to be Norman, Originally Rousell

Here's what Woulfe wrote in his 1923 book:

RUISÉIL—XII—Rushell, Rosel, Rossell, Russell; Norman 'russel,' i.e., red-haired, diminutive of 'rous.' This surname came into Ireland at the time of the Anglo-Norman invasion and soon became very widespread, being specially common in Dublin, Meath, Westmeath, Limerick, Cork, Waterford, Louth and Down. The Russells of Co. Down came over with Sir John de Courcy. They held extensive property down to the confiscations of the 17th century. The late Lord Russell of Killowen, Lord Chief Justice of England, belonged to this ancient and illustrious family.

Now that's an interesting surname. Of the 91 households carrying surname (or variant) in Griffith Survey a total of 55 were in Tipperary:

https://www.johngrenham.com/findasurname.php?surname=mockler&search_type=variants

Anybody ever come across Falcon
I found the name 5 generations back in our family but know nothing about it other then they were in East Meath
Is it possible it became Faulkner

Faulkner is indeed an occupational surname; it's a Norman name. The modern French for "falcon" is faucon; in Norman French it was faulcon.

"Falcon" as a surname could be a shortening of Falconer/Faulkner, or it could actually be an independent name derived directly from the bird if, e.g., somebody adopted the bird as a heraldic symbol, and was subsequently named for the symbol. Falcone, which means the same thing, is a common surname in Italy.

21Savage wrote: »

At a guess, how many Irish people are of partial Norman descent?

The great majority!

Three of my sixteen great,great grandparents have Norman names.

The normans intermarried, and as was said when I was young, "became more Irish than the Irish themselves"

There may be a few Irish devoid of Norman ancestry, but very few.