My NARRAMORE research began with my 3 x great-grandmother Anstess Narramore who was born on 6 April 1790 in Paignton, Devon and died 75 years later in 1865. Anstess Narramore was the youngest child of Giles Narramore (b. 1747 in Paignton) and the grand-daughter of Giles Narramore (b. 1718 in Churston Ferrers in Devon). The surname does not occur with any great frequency and until tracing my paternal line back to Anstess Narramore, I had not encountered it. As a locative surname it links its early bearers with a moorland area. In the case of the English county of Devon this could be Dartmoor. With this in mind this Narramore study will initially focus on Devon.

Preliminary research has identified NARRAMORE as the primary spelling of the surname, with the variant NARROWMORE* and 43 deviant spellings. NARRAMORE was found to be the most common spelling in an analysis of approximately 2500 occurrences of Narramore in the UK, using the search string na*r*mo*r*. Narramore had 2165 occurrences, Narrowmore 74 and Naramore 71. This analysis dataset was obtained from searches of digitally available vital records (births, marriages and deaths), censuses, parish records, wills, oath rolls and freeholders’ lists (using Find My Past, Ancestry, Family Search, FreeBMD, FreeReg, GENUKI, Friends of Devon Archives and Devon Family History Society). As bearers of the name Narramore are not numerous when compared with other surnames, the 2500 name occurrences undoubtedly contain duplicates of the same individuals.

When occurrences of the na*r*mo*r* search string from the 1880 USA Census were added to the UK results, NARRAMORE remained the most frequent spelling, but NARAMORE was more common in the USA and overtook NARROWMORE in the combined totals. There were no occurrences of Narramore, its variants or deviants in the 1881 Canadian Census. Interestingly, there were more Narramores living in the United States of America in 1880 than were in the UK (i.e., England, Scotland and Wales) in 1881: 339 versus 130. These numbers as percentages of their respective populations have not been calculated.

Surnames, such as Bynorthmor/Bynorthmoor and Northmore, which appear to be locative with a similar derivation may be included in this study at some future point. 

*NARROWMORE has been included as a variant at this stage as it has been identified as such in the Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland (Hanks, Patrick, Richard Coates, & Peter McClure. ‘Narramore’ in The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://www.oxfordreference.com : accessed 5 Jul. 2022.)

Narramore is an English locative surname derived from the Middle English words for north/northern and moor. UK census data indicates that it was primarily located in Devon. The name may have referred to those from northern Dartmoor. 

(See Hanks, Patrick, Coates, Richard, & McClure, Peter. (2016) The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland. Oxford: Oxford University Press. http://www.oxfordreference.com: accessed 23 September 2018).

Narramore is an uncommon surname with a UK frequency of 159 in 2016 (according to The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland. Oxford: Oxford University Press. http://www.oxfordreference.com: accessed 23 September 2018).

According to UK census data (1841-1911), the majority of Narramores (68.2%) were born in the county of Devon; the remainder were distributed among 21 other English counties, Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. Devon births remained stable between 1841 (69%) and 1911 (64%): percentages varying between 58% (1891) and 81% (1861).

Using the same UK census dataset, apart from Devon, Narramores were found in 20 other locations in the UK. These were mainly in English counties, with some individuals resident in the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. The majority of Narramores (65%) lived in Devon between 1841 and 1911. In 1841, the census data shows that the same number born in Devon were also resident there, i.e., 69%; by 1911 the percentage of Narramores living in Devon had dropped to 55%. This indicates that Devon retained a stable core of Narramore families until at least the early 20th century, even though by this time it may not have been home to the majority of Narramores worldwide (see USA total versus the UK's in 1880/1881 under Variants).