*****UPDATE*****

The Blood One-Name Study is now hosted at Wikitree

Click here to go there: Blood Name Study at Wikitree

There, you'll find a considerable amount of information and analyses concerning the Bloods of the English Midlands, as well as their descendent branches in North America and Ireland.

*****UPDATE*****

Goals:

1. To determine the origin of the surname both geographically and temporally, taking into account the possibility that there were multiple origin events.
2. Assuming there were multiple origin events, to characterize the nature of the relationship (if any) between the different lines.
3. To provide data and or insights of value to the two DNA projects currently focused on the deep origins of the surname (Medieval and earlier).

Scope: This study will focus on the English-origin version of this surname. A German-origin line of Bloods and a French-origin line of Bloods will be excluded for the time being.

Phases:

• Phase 1 will focus on the Bloods of England up to 1650.
• Phase 2 will focus on the Bloods of New England up to 1750.

Future phases will expand in time and geography, at least incorporating the rest of Great Britain and the island of Ireland and then moving on to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

Variants that have survived into the present day: Blod, Blode, Blood, Bloode, Bloodde, Bloud, Blud, Blude, Bludd and Bludde.

Variants that appear to have gone extinct: Blodd, Blodde, Bloodd, Bloudd, and Bloudde.

Deviant spellings: Blade, Bland, Blande, Blond, Blonde, Blund, Blunde.*

*Note: Any transcription alleged to be a Blood variant but with the Norman French "Le" prefix should be immediately considered suspect. So far, all such instances have been found to be transcription errors for Le Blond(e) or Le Blund(e), two well-attested but unrelated Anglo-Norman surnames. Examples identified so far include Le Blonde transcribed as Le Blode and Le Blund transcribed as both Le Blud and Le Bloud. Also note that the reverse mistake is far more common with respect to the variant Bloud, which in 15th to 17th century script is often indistinguishable from Blond, resulting in several examples of Blouds becoming Blonds in various databases.

Ultimate Origin: The deep origin of the surname Blood is a mystery that has thwarted every attempt at solving by generations of researchers. What is clear is that in every era in which the surname appears, and in every variant in which it appears, that same word as a noun in the form of English spoken at that time only ever referred to the human bodily fluid blood. The evolution of the surname Blood has followed the evolution of the English word for blood in near lockstep for the better part of 800 years.

Language Family of Origin: There is very little doubt is that whatever the geographic origin of Blood, the name comes from the West Germanic family of languages. In parallel, Y-DNA analysis has shown that living male Bloods of English descent carry typical West Germanic genetic markers.

Geographic Origin: At present, the geographic origin of the name, while assumed to be somewhere in England, is not known. The earliest unquestioned instance of the name to survive in the records, in the original spelling Blod, dates from 1256 in Northumberland. Yet the highest concentration of the name from the 15th century to the present day was and is in the English Midlands -- mainly in a region that encompasses south Derbyshire, east Staffordshire, and south Nottinghamshire.

Functional Origin: Outside of the apparent fact that the name must have somehow been related to blood, its origin and original intent (assuming there was only one) is completely unknown.

Below are the six oldest records of people carrying the surname Blood or one of its variants in England. 

• William Blod is found in a sale and quitclaim of a property in Coventry, Warwickshire dated to sometime between the beginning of the earldom of Ranulph II of Chester (1129) and the end of the reign of Edward II (1307). Given that 71% of the range from 1129 to 1307 falls prior to 1256, it is statistically likely this is actually the oldest reference to the surname Blood in England, but as the document is undated this cannot be proven.
• John Blod and William Blod are listed in the Assize Rolls of Northumberland in the year 1256. This is the earliest securely dated occurrence of the surname and is generally listed as the oldest firm occurrence in most secondary sources.*
• Agnes Blod, widow of Robert Blod, relinquished her rights to lands she owned in Pershore, Worcestershire to Pershore Abbey sometime between 1262 and 1274.**
• John Blod, sergeant-at-arms, was mentioned in a royal order "witnessed by the king at Woodstock [Oxfordshire] the 20th day of December" in 1266.
• Robert Blod and Thomas Blod witnessed a quitclaim in Canterbury, Kent sometime between 25 Mar 1268 and 24 Mar 1269 (dated to a regnal year only).
• Gilbert Blod was mentioned in town records from Hereford, Herefordshire, in the year 1281. He was the first of as many as nine Blod men found in the Hereford records by 1350.***

These six records account for nine people bearing the surname, the sum total of all documented Bloods up to 1300. While scant, what this does tell us is that the surname dates back to at least the 13th century and possibly to sometime in the 12th century. This is pushing back to the very beginning of the adoption of surnames among the English at the insistence of their Norman overlords after the conquest, meaning that Blood is probably among the oldest English surnames.

*Note 1: This is possibly also the first evidence of Blood being used as a surname and not a personal descriptor if these two people were from the same family (something we will likely never be able to determine).

**Note 2: This is the first example of Blood being used as a surname in the sense of being given by a husband to his wife upon marriage.

***Note 3: One of these Hereford Bloods, Thomas Blod in 1316, is the first example of Blood being used as an inherited surname, in that a record of that year notes Thomas as "the son of Lawrence Blod."

.

The table here tracks all variants of the surname Blood in the UK censuses from 1841 to 1921. Whether the various censuses documented every living Blood or not, the ratios between the various spellings probably reflect reality better than the raw numbers. What is apparent immediately, and as stated previously, is that the spelling Blood had become dominant during the mid-1600s and by the first half of the 19th century was the overwhelming majority spelling. The Blood spelling accounted for at least 92% of entries in every decade represented here. These data also indicate that many of the remaining variant spellings were dying out, and by the early part of the 20th century most were effectively extinct -- with Blud being the only one that appeared to have much chance of survival. That being said, some of these variants either experienced a later resurrection, were invisible in the censuses, or survived in pockets outside of the United Kingdom, because a cursory search on Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn shows a small number of people with the names Blode, Bloud, and even Bludd living today.

.

.

.

.

.

.

As these geographic distribution graphics demonstrate pretty effectively, regardless of its place(s) of origin within England, Blood was and still is primarily a surname of the Midlands. The only significant change to its distribution since 1650 has been a further increase in London and an expansion northwest to Manchester, both of which can be explained by the availability of jobs in those areas due to the Industrial Revolution.

Data for this study is taken from a variety of sources, including:

• FindMyPast.co.uk for English BMD records, probate documents, and access to UK censuses
• Ancestry.co.uk for English BMD records, probate documents, and original parish records
• FamilySearch.org for English BMD records as well as access to probate records, land records, and court documents from colonial New England
• The New England Historical Genealogical Society (AmericanAncestors.org) for access to colonial New England BMD records
• The UK National Archives for records of pre-Modern occurrences of the surname
• British History Online for records of pre-Modern occurrences of the surname
• County archives, mainly Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire so far, for probate documents, land records, civil court case documents, and ecclesiastical court records
• Archives maintained by universities such as the University of Nottingham Manuscripts & Special Collections and the Borthwick Institute at the University of York for probate records, land records, civil court case documents, and ecclesiastical court records
• Ongoing DNA analysis as described in the DNA section below

The Blood Family Group Project is a Y-DNA project hosted at FamilyTreeDNA for males bearing the surname Blood or who can trace their patrilineal line of ascent to a man bearing that surname. The aim of the project is to determine which branches are related to which down the paternal line. The group currently has 13 tested participants from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, but is hoping to find Irish Bloods (esp. County Clare) to contribute as well. The majority of Blood participants are haplogroup R1b1a1a2a1a1 (better known as R-U106) and are positive for the R-A6093/FGC17294 marker. The only exception to this is one male Nottinghamshire Blood who migrated to New England and some of whose male descendants are now Haplogroup I2. Given that descendants of his own brother are R-U106, this is considered firm evidence that either he or one of his sons was of a different father than the records reflect.

The Blood Y-DNA project is also part of the R-A6093 North Mercia Group Project, which aims to get to the bottom of an anomaly found in the results of Y-DNA testing of both male Bloods and males of other surnames that show a very close genetic relationship to the tested Bloods when compared to the extensive Y-DNA database held by FamilyTreeDNA. The data have shown very clearly that many English Bloods and other surnames closely related to them genetically, especially those from what was once the northern part of old Mercia, are also closely related to a male population currently residing in areas that were once part of the Medieval Kingdom of Poland (so-called Greater Poland), who by all accounts have been there since the Early Middle Ages if not before. 

Analysis so far shows there were two obvious periods of splitting and expansion within the R-A6093 haplogroup. The first was around the time of its formation, which appears to have occurred in coastal northwestern Europe in the region that is now the Netherlands during the earlier period of Roman occupation of the southern part of that region from 55 BC. The second was in the Early Medieval Period (ca. 550 AD) in England. What would have caused two genetically closely-related populations to be found so far apart geographically so far back in recorded history? The project pursued three research questions in order to better understand this situation:

1. Did the original England/Greater Poland split occur during a presumed substantial flooding event of the North Sea coast/Frisian lowlands around 150 BC, when the local Germanic tribes (mainly the Cimbrians and Teutons) were forced away from the now-submerged coastline?
2. Did the main expansion occur a) during the recovery period from the Black Death, when up to 2/3 of the population needed to be rapidly replaced in various areas; or b) during the mediaeval warm period from 1000 to 1300 when populations expanded (albeit more slowly); or c) steadily across the whole period?
3. What is the sequence of divergence of the surnames from this line? 

Initial findings are as follows:

• A6093 probably originated on the Continental North Sea coast in about 150 AD, in what is now the Netherlands.
• A6093 is a West Germanic haplogroup that it would not be wrong to characterise as Old Frisian, meaning the tribe the Romans knew as the Frisii and who disappeared from the historical record after about 300 AD (the so-called "New Frisians" from the 6th century onwards were Angle and Saxon settlers from other areas, with no relationship to the historical Frisii).
• The genetic split between what would become the English and Polish populations of A6093 (FGC17294 & FT178522) occurred at about the same time as the haplogroup's formation ca. 150 AD. 
• At some point not later than 550 AD, founding members of the A6093 English population crossed the North Sea and settled on the island of Britain. Presumably in this same period members of what would become the A6093 Polish population began migrating eastwards away from the coast.
• The Jackson line (FGC17309) is the first identified split in the English A6093 population, occurring in about 550 AD.
• The Ashmore-Coker line (FGC17310) split off in about 950 AD.
• The Coker line (BY60604) split from Ashmore in about 1200 AD.
• Two distinct Hyde lines & the Blood line (FT85184, FT200000, and FT198830) separated in about 1150 AD.     
• The Highfield & Chittam-Elliott lines (FT199987) split from each other in about 1200 AD.         
• The Nottinghamshire Blood & Derbyshire Blood lines (FT124365/FT85084) separated in about 1400 AD.
• The Nottinghamshire Hyde & Derbyshire Hyde lines (FT198853) also split in about 1400 AD.

The Jackson split indicates the ancestral English A6093 population had been in North Mercia since at least 550 AD, i.e., during the existence of the historical Kingdom of Mercia. This conclusion is based on the fact that this line is still found in Staffordshire today, meaning members of A6093 had already settled in North Mercia before this first split in the English population. See the Journal of the Guild of One-Name Studies, Volume 14, Issue 9, Extended One-Name Study - R-A6093 North Mercia Project by Dr. Joe Flood for a complete write-up of the findings.

Implications: This scenario -- a population of Frisians living on the North Sea coast in what is now the Netherlands in about 150 AD turning up in the Anglian kingdom of Mercia in about 550 AD -- is consistent with the conventional model of sub-Roman British history. That is, a hodge-podge of Germanic tribes living across the North Sea from Roman Britain in the waning days of the empire saw a chance to establish a new homeland and took it. A conglomeration of various Saxon, Angle, Frisian, Jutish, and even Frankish groups began a military invasion/armed migration/cultural replacement/mostly peaceful assimilation of the eastern part of sub-Roman Britain (scholarly opinion on how to characterise it varies considerably now), eventually becoming the dominant ethnic group in what is now England and ading to the already mixed population that would become the English.