I first became aware of the surname Ovard when I found it as a middle name of my paternal grandfather, and then as his mother's maiden name.

I started out just looking at the surname of OVARD, but as time went by, I found that the spelling would sometimes change to OVERD, this could occur within the same family tree, other times not.  For a while it looked as though these variants in name were maybe regional, but then there were times when both names appeared in the same area. As time went further back the letter H often got appended to the front, possibly due to being written down from the spoken name.

As a result, whilst I actively look for the names of OVARD and OVERD, if I find the names HOVARD, HOVERD and HOLFORD which might be linked to the two original names then I will collect this data to see if over time they are truly related or not.

Initially the names seemed to be found in the Oxfordshire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire areas, but then were also found in Somerset and migrating across to South Wales.

As the result of one family migrating to the U.S.A. with the Church of Latter Day Saints in the mid-1800's there is now a strong presence of the name OVARD in the state of Utah.