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Thrift
One-Name Study

Topics

Variants

The surname Thrift is often really a variant of Frith. Variants are discussed in detail in the section below on Origins. Although there are many related surnames, the only ones officially registered with the Guild currently are Thrift and Evilthrift.

I am collecting links to family trees of ALL the related surnames, and vital data (birth /christening /marriage /death /census) for Thrift & Evilthrift.

The most common variants, Firth & Frith, are beyond my resources to research other than collecting family trees (that is, I don't have resources to dig for vital data for these surnames.) However I do hope eventually to research vital data for the rarer variants among those listed below. Note that if YOU contribute vital data on ANY of the related surnames, official or not, it will be included in the searchable online archive.

Origin of the surname

In Old English 'fyrhpe' (frith, woodland), the character 'p' stands for the runic Anglo-Saxon character 'thorn,' which represents a sound similar to 'th.' 'Fyrhpe' does sound somewhat like like 'firth.' Reaney and Wilson's Dictionary of English Surnames (which however does not cover any Scottish, Irish, or Welsh origins) states that English names deriving from the word fyrhpe include Firth, Frith, Frid, Fridd, Fryd, Freeth, Freed, Vreede, Frift, Thrift, Fright, Freak, Freake, Freke, Firk, and Firks. (I highly recommend looking at the entry linked above!) The exact form of the surname thus depended on the local dialect, and on the listening and spelling skills -or lack thereof- of the census-taker or parish scribe. (Surname variations actually used by the individuals are called 'variants'. Incorrectly spelled entries in the vital registers, not actually used by the individual, are termed 'deviants'. Sometimes it can be difficult to tell the difference.)

In the book 'Surnames of Scotland' by George Black, the name Thrift is said to have derived from the common meaning of the noun 'thrift' (which the Oxford English Dictionary relates to the verb 'thrive,' also spelled with a thorn).

Other origins have also been noted, most obviously from the place name Firth. Miriam-Webster's on-line dictionary has 'Etymology: Middle English, from Old Norse fjǫrthr. Date: 14th century.'

The above are generalities. I would like to get specifics as far as possible. If anyone is knowledgeable about shifts in regional pronunciations in Old and Middle English, or about the earliest occurrences of a surname at specific locales, I'd love to get your input.

Geoffry atte Frythe and Walter atte Frythe are listed in the Rotherfield Subsidy (Tax list) of 1296 for the Villat' de Suthborgh Township of the South tithing in the Hundred de Retherfeld, Sussex. Associated place names are Frighthurst Farm, Fright Farm, & Frights Cottage, near Mark Cross & Rotherfield, East Sussex. Although there are some early Friths mentioned here, the surname does not seem to be unusually common in this area. The Dictionary of English Surnames states that when the 'h' of 'fyrhpe' was preserved, the 'hp' often became 'ht' and later 'ght.' The Fright surname is most frequent not far away in Kent; this suggests that the sound shift occurred more than once in the area, and thus there may be a local tendency for this sound shift. In other areas, 'hp' became 'kp' or just 'k' as in Ferkche and Freek.

Many other place names include the term Frith: Aldington Frith in Kent, The Frythe, Welwyn, Hertfordshire (residence of John del Frithe in the 13th century), Frithsden in Hertfordshire, Chapel-en-le-Frith, and Duffield Frith in Derbyshire, Wrenbury cum Frith parish in Cheshire, Frith Common in Worcestershire, Bruach na Frìthe on Skye, Firth parish, Orkney, etc.

Early occurrences of these surnames mentioned in Reaney and Wilson's Dictionary of English Surnames include Ralph Delfrid (1176, Surrey), Wlmar de Frith (1195, Kent), John del Friht (1197 & 1203, Kent & Norfolk), John del Frith (1201, Norfolk), Henry de fricht (c 1248, Buckinghamshire), Alexander del Frike (1275, Worcester), William en le Frith (1276, Essex), Nicholas atte Ferthe (1296, Sussex), Edith Ythefrith (1300, Worcester), Robert atte Ferghe (1327, Sussex), Denis Frede (1327, Essex), John atte Ferkche (1332, Sussex), and Thomas atte Vrythe (1333, Somerset). ('Ythe' and 'atte' are contractions for 'in the' and 'at the.')

Although the Dictionary of English Surnames states that ''Thrift' is a common late development, not so far noted before the 18th century' (-referring to England), the surname is found in the Virginia by the late 17th century, and James Thrift was a reidare at Collace, a parish near Perth, in 1574.

One very intriguing variation is the surname Evilthrift, found near Hertfordshire, which in some cases has evolved into Thrift. Most likely this derived from a form such as 'del Frithe' found in the area in the 13th century. (However I wonder whether it may relate to the name of Aethelfrith, King of Bernicia (Northumbria), d. 616.)

Historical occurrences

A few people of note with these surnames:

Frith & Freeth, Firth, Frid

(The lists above are far from complete, and focus on names from popular culture. Feel free to contribute other names that should be included here.)

Here are my favorites:

Providence, Bahamas, July 1702 (The governor is whining about his lack of control over his people, and gives examples of how outrageous they are): 'Samuel Thrift forcibly took away the wife of one Starr, and detains her from him, and most of the rest live after the same manner by daily changing of wives and mistresses.' 'America and West Indies: July 1702, 6-10', Calendar of State Papers. Colonial, America and West Indies: 1702, volume 20 (1912), pp. 441-463.

And then there's Hezekiah FRITH, son of William Frith ( -1771) and Sarah Lea, was born in 1763. He hoarded booty from two stolen ships, kidnapped a young French woman, hid her from his wife - and stashed his wealth for his family to start a liquor store.

Might as well mention Syd Thrift (1929-2006) too , a better reputation than the above, but once a pirate always a Pirate...

Frequency of the name

Entries in the 1841 census, England & Wales

http://pilot.familysearch.org/recordsearch/start.html#p=2;c=1493745;t=searchable;w=

Firth 3900

Frith 1808

Thrift 269

Evilthrift 2

Frift 6

Freeth 467

Freed 78

Frid 55

Fridd 26

Fryd 0

Vreede 0

Fright 123

Freak 90

Freke 74

Freake 35

Firks 16

Firk 0

Distribution of the name

The UB-Southall area of greater London is the region with the highest normalized frequency of Thrifts in 1881. The home counties surrounding London show high frequencies of Thrifts as well. In Scotland in 1881, Perthshire is the only region with Thrifts, but the frequency is low. (The frequency in Perthshire is even lower in 1998.) Currently in the USA, the state with the highest frequency of Thrifts is Georgia.

In mapping surname distributions, the absolute number of occurrences always tends to highlight the most populous areas, e.g. London. In contrast, the normalized frequency of a surname emphasizes the regions where the surname is most common as a percentage of the local population. This may provide a clue as to where the surname originated. (Or it may merely show where families have migrated to, and have been able to proliferate, over the past several hundred years after the founding of the surname. To see how radically the distribution has changed in the last ~100 years alone one can open maps (as described below) for 1881 and 1998 side-by-side.)

To view the distribution (in terms of normalized frequencies) of a surname in England, Wales, & Scotland in 1881, use this link (you can right-click to open it in a new window), click the 'search' button, enter the surname, and click '1881'. Once you reach the map, you can find more details on each surname in the links near the top.

One can open several web browser windows at once from the above link, and compare the distributions of several surnames. The distributions of Thrift, Frith, Firth, and Freeth in 1881 do not co-localize, and so don't really give the initial impression that they share a common origin. However, what we really need is data from 500 years earlier.

For comparison, the following links show absolute numbers of occurrences in each region, from the 1891 census:

Thrift surname in England and Wales

Thrift surname in Scotland

Firth surname in England and Wales

Firth surname in Scotland

Frith surname in England and Wales

Frith surname in Scotland

Freeth surname in England and Wales

Freeth surname in Scotland in 1891

Freke surname in England and Wales

Data

Please send me a link to your online family tree or family history records, for ANY of the surname variants. If it is not online, please post it, or contact me if I can help.

Eventually we will have a web page here on the Guild site which will index all occurrences of Thrift & Evilthrift that can be found in the various free online vital records of England, Wales & Scotland, and we will have a head start in organizing these into families. (An example is the Ferneyhough archive for births, marriages, deaths, and adoptions, http://www.one-name.org/archives/fernyhough.html ). The archive will allow Birth, Marriage and Death records from England & Wales (from 1837) and Scotland (from 1855), Civil Probate Records from England & Wales (from 1858), and Census Records from England & Wales (1841 to 1901).

Help in gathering data would be appreciated. My preference is to give highest priority to the oldest available data. (I find it interesting that while the Guild insists that we agree to collect data worldwide, they only provide a mechanism on their site for presenting vital data from England & Wales, and from limited periods in Scotland. However this focus will be very useful.)

1790 USA census results (all 17 entries for Thrift -Hey, it's a start!) (Most are also in the online family trees listed above):

http://boards.rootsweb.com/surnames.thrift/212/mb.ashx

DNA project

We need you (or your brothers or uncles) to join!

Note that a FREE DNA test is available through SMGF, a research foundation. (The free test can go far to show which families you are related to, although the more expensive test can of course resolve more questions. Some of the tradeoffs are discussed at the project's intro & results site.) However, SMGF is well worth the price! Do one or both! If nothing else, PLEASE use the free research organization, SMGF, to be tested and get your family's results into this project.

A one-name project tends to focus on lists of names. I would like to organize as many names as possible into family trees. Further, I would like to be able to show which trees are closely related even if no documentation exists on paper.

There are many cases where it seems one family is probably related to another with a similar surname, but this can’t be proven by historical records. These relationships can be revealed through DNA testing. It can be shown whether two families are closely related or not, based on specific markers in the DNA of the Y chromosome. Beyond this limited usage, DNA testing can sometimes be used to arrange a whole group of families into a larger family tree covering many generations, showing which families probably branched off soon after the earliest common ancestor, and which branches split more recently. This can be done EVEN IF BIRTH RECORDS ARE LACKING. (However, best results require a large group of contributors, in order to trace where each change occurred --so find your sixth cousins and get them involved!)

Links

(Forums similar to the above exist for most of the related surnames as well.)

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Contact details

For further information, contact:

Dr Richard Thrift
E-mail:

This page last updated 11 October 2008.

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