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Guild of One-Name Studies

One-name studies, Genealogy

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    • 2,112 members
    • 2,031 studies
    • 7,227 surnames

Stability

Section Note:

“In the late middle ages… the turnover of surnames in ‘local communities’ was extensive. Stability was only re-established in the sixteenth century, when a long-term persistence of surnames returned.” (Postles SLR p347)


Cohen, Anthony P.  Belonging : identity and social organisation in British rural cultures , edited by A.P. Cohen – Manchester : Manchester University Press, 1982. – (Anthropological studies of Britain ; no.1). – 071900859x

Evans, Nesta   ‘The descent of dissenters in the Chilterns’, in Margaret Spufford (ed), The World of the Rural Dissenters 1520-1725 -Cambridge, 1995, pp288-388
Abstract: A comparison of the surnames in use in the 1524 Lay Subsidy Roll with those in the Hearth Tax of 1662, supplemented by the Hearth Tax of 1664, and the Free and Voluntary Present of 1661. Finding: 29% of the surnames persisted between the two periods.

Hey, David  ‘Continuity in local and regional identity: the evidence of family names’ Devon Historian 2006, no. 72, pp. 2-6

Hey, David   ‘Stable families in Tudor and Stuart England’ in  Names, time and place : essays in memory of Richard McKinley, edited by Della Hooke and David Postles. Leopard’s Head Press, 2003, pp 165-180

Howell, Cecily   Land, family and inheritance in transition :Kibworth Harcourt 1280-1700 – Cambridge University Press, 1983 – Isbn 0521246318

Jones, G.P.  ‘Continuity and change in surnames in four northern parishes’. Transactions of the Cumberland & Westmorland Antiquarian & Archaeological Society, ns, 73 (1973), 142-7.

Lord, Evelyn  ‘The distribution and stability of surnames in south-east Surrey- 1664-1851 in English surnames’ in  Names, time and place : essays in memory of Richard McKinley, edited by Della Hooke and David Postles. Leopard’s Head Press, 2003, pp 181-192

Postles, Suella and David   ‘Surnames and stability : a detailed case study’ in  Names, time and place : essays in memory of Richard McKinley, edited by Della Hooke and David Postles. Leopard’s Head Press, 2003, pp 194-208

Snell, K.D.M. ‘Gravestones, belonging and local attachment in England 1700-2000’ Past & Present 179 (May 2003), 97-134

Spufford, Peter   ‘The comparative mobility and immobility of Lollard descendants in early modern England’, in Margaret Spufford (ed), The World of the Rural Dissenters 1520-1725 -Cambridge, 1995, pp309-331
Abstract: Findings that “it was normal, from the sixteenth to the eighteeenth century, for some 15-25 per cent of surnames to survive for a century”. This was based on the parish – area persistence rates should be higher.

Wyatt, G. "Population change and stability in a Cheshire parish during the eighteenth century." Local Population Studies, no. 43 (1989): 47-54.
Abstract: "Migration and stability of population are examined here principally through the study of surnames. Migration and stability are detected in three different ways: from changes in the local stock of surnames from the continuity of families through successive generations; and through the provenance of marriage partners. Nantwich, a parish in south Cheshire, has been chosen for this study.”

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