More than 20 years ago I started researching my family history and soon discovered that one of my paternal great great grandmothers was called Eliza Mackness, born in Little Houghton, Northamptonshire in about 1838. At first I thought I had come across evidence of Scottish heritage but as I could find no trace of her birth of baptism in the records available to me at the time I abandoned her for easier to research family lines.

Recently more Northamptonshire data has become available online and I started to do a more systematic search for Eliza. I turned up many Mackness, Mackaness and Mackarness individuals and became increasingly curious about these families. I registered this study in 2021. I am particularly keen to reconstruct families and trace the migration of the name forward throughout England and then further afield and backward towards a possible origin.

Mackaness and Mackarness have been registered. Mackeness and Mackerness are also found and do appear to be variants rather than deviants. If these names prove to overlap with the registered variants I will add them to the study.

The fairly localised name distribution suggests a locative origin but where that location might be is uncertain.

According Charles Waring Bardsley in his Dictionary of English and Welsh Surnames Mackness is a variant of Mackarness about which he writes

“ Mackarness – Local, “of Maukerness”, seemingly some spot on the East Coast; cf Holderness. There is no connextion [sic] with the Mac’s or Mc’s of Ireland or Scotland, as in Macdonald or McGrath.”

The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland has Mackness as a variant of Mackerness but apart from identifying the name as English has no explanation for its origin.

My research is a the very early stages so I have not yet identified any notable individuals.

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography has an entry for John Fielder Mackarness (1820 – 1889) who was Bishop of Oxford (1870 -1888).

The ONS list of surnames gives the following figures for England and Wales as of 2002.

Mackness – 547 individuals, ranked =10,586^th

Mackaness - 76 individuals, ranked =39,337^th

Mackarness - 17 individuals, ranked =100,824^th

From Family search indexes the 1881 Census figures for England and Wales are:

Mackness - 360 individuals

Mackaness – 28 individuals

Mackarness – 19 individuals

The Mackness entry in Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland has

Current frequencies: GB 402, Ireland 5

GB frequency 1881: 317

None of the variant surnames were found in the USA 2010 census and only 2 Mackness entries in 1880.

Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland shows that Mackness was predominantly found in Northamptonshire, Leicestershire and Bedfordshire in the 1881 Census and my own analysis of Births, Deaths and Marriages from 1837 to 1989 gives the same result. Concentrations in Essex (most in West Ham), Surrey (most in Lambeth ) and Middlesex show a fairly strong presence in London particularly in the late 19^th century. The West and North Ridings of Yorkshire also have a small but enduring presence.

The USA, Canada and Australia have occasional references in the indices on Family Search and Ancestry but the name doesn’t seem to be prevalent in any of them.