Guild of One-Name Studies
One-name studies, Genealogy
Study: Lingwood
Variants: Lingewood, Lingewoode, Lingwoode, Lyngwood, Lyngwoode
Category: 3 - A study where research using core genealogical datasets and transcriptions is well under way on a global basis.
Guild hosted website: lingwood.one-name.net
DNA website: www.familytreedna.com/groups/lingwood
Contact: Mrs Diane Lingwood
I started work on my husband's family tree (Lingwood) in 1995. The original family tree had many unrelated branches it was in essence the start of an informal one name study. To solve some of the queries and mysteries I decided to work on a one name study and I joined the Guild of One Name Studies in 2009 to progress this in a more organised manner.
Through the Lingwood surname study I aim to research all the occurrences of the name and its variants world-wide. Whilst I have gathered lots of information over the years I have always been anxious about committing this to paper, or a website, knowing that there were still many gaps in the information. But as many others have said - a one name project will never be 100% complete!
So there is now a website for the Lingwood one name study, for information see links at the bottom of this page. Here you will find more detailed information, analysis, facts and histories. I hope you find the information useful and interesting and if you have any queries please get in touch.
Diane
The study focusses on the Lingwood name and the variants Lingwoode, Lyngwood and Lyngwoode. More recently I have studied the name Linggood as a variant.
I have also been looking at the relationship between the Lingwood and Linwood surnames. Clearly there are a number of instances where a family's name has changed from one to the other in the past. Errors have been made in the spelling of the name when births, deaths and marriages were registered or when parish records were made. The Linwood surname is found in different parts of the country to Lingwood so currently I am assuming that Linwood is not a variant of Lingwood.
The name Lingwood is a local surname deriving from a place name (a locative or toponymic name). Locational surnames are usually 'from' names, in other words the names given to people after they left their original homes. When they left they took or were given as their surname, the name of the place from where they came. In this case this relates to the village of Lingwood which is located about 8 miles east of Norwich, Norfolk where parts of the local church St Peter’s were established in the fourteenth century.
The name Lingwood means the wood of lime trees and interestingly this same definition applies to the surname Linwood. This is also a surname deriving from a place name but relates to places called Linwood in Hampshire, Lincolnshire and near Paisley in Scotland.
From my research I have found evidence (mainly early baptism, marriage and burial records) of the following people with the name Lingwood (or a variant)
John and Joan Lyngwood and their children:
In the Oxford Dictionary they identify the following early bearers of the surname:
Using the 1881 England & Wales 1881 census information, taken from a well-known genealogy website this shows 542 Lingwood names recorded. This gives a frequency of 1 in 47,649 or 0.002% of the population. A surname database showed that in September 2002 there were some 819 people named Lingwood in England & Wales. This gives a frequency of 1 in 66, 422 or 0.0015% of the population. At that time it made Lingwood the 7,760th most common name in England & Wales. The figures indicate that the Lingwood name is growing less slowly that the population as a whole. The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland, published in 2016, gives a current count for the Lingwood surname in Great Britain of 638.
Looking at census information more globally, and ensuring that transcription errors of the name Lingwood have been addressed, then a more accurate picture can be gleaned. As detailed in the table below:
The study aims to research the origin and global distribution of the Lingwood surname and variants. Currently most of the information has been gathered for the UK, Ireland, the USA, Canada and Australia.
In the UK the pattern of the Lingwood name distribution has changed over time. Using the 1881 census the largest number of people with the Lingwood surname could be found in Norfolk, followed by the counties of Suffolk and Middlesex. At this point the surname was not very dispersed and it was only as people moved away for employment to places like London that the pattern changed. The majority of Lingwoods living in Norfolk were agricultural labourers so with the mechanisation of farming and the consequential reduction in the need for agricultural labourers in traditional farming areas the population dispersed.
My analysis of living Lingwood's shows a distribution for the name Lingwood across practically the whole of England, but in some counties there are very small numbers. The highest numbers are found in Yorkshire and Norfolk followed by Essex, Surrey and Lancashire. In terms of living people with Lingwood variant names (Lyngwood, Lyngwoode, Lingwoode) there are none.
Looking elsewhere there are only a smattering of individuals in 3 Welsh counties and a handful of people in Scotland and Ireland. Whilst there has been some Lingwood emigration to Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States this has been at a relatively low number. The largest numbers can be found in the United States but they only represent around 5% of the global Lingwood population.
A variety of data sources have been used for this one name study, detail can be found on the website, these include:
England & Wales - Registered births, marriages and deaths. Parish baptism, marriage and burial records. Census records for 1841, 1851, 1861, 1871, 1881, 1891, 1901, 1911, 1921 as well as the 1939 Register. Migration, criminal, parish and probate records have also been researched.
Scotland - Information on births, baptisms, marriages, deaths and burials as well as census records for 1841, 1851, 1861, 1871, 1881, 1891, 1901 and 1911.
Australia - Information on births, marriages and deaths as well as burial, immigration and convict records.
Canada - Information on births, marriages and deaths as well as immigration records. Census records for 1861, 1871, 1881, 1891, 1901, 1911 and 1921.
Ireland - Information on births, baptisms, marriages, deaths and burials as well as immigration records. Census records for 1901 and 1911.
United States - Information on births, baptisms, marriages, deaths and burials as well as immigration records. Census records for 1850, 1860, 1870, 1880, 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930 and 1940.
In addition information from newspapers, schools, universities, professions, trade union and military records has been included.
I have just recently started a DNA study and a first DNA test has been carried out. Early details of the project can be found at the following website.
DNA Website: http://www.familytreedna.com/groups/lingwood
For further information about the Lingwood one name study why not visit my website, see below.
Lingwood one name website https://Lingwood.one-name.net