I grew up with objects and artefacts referred to as coming 'from the Pringuers'. They had come from my second cousin, twice removed, Florence Mildred Saltmarsh Challen (1879-1948), third wife of Henry Thomas Pringuer (1852-1930). Dr Pringuer, or 'HTP' as he is known in the family, was an organist and musician in the latter part of the 19th-, and early 20th-century. My own interest, and eventual career in music, meant that much of these Pringuer artefacts have, over the years, been passed on to me.

The unusual name has prompted much interest over the years, both in the family and beyond. The focus of this study is to not just collect instances of the name alone, but to find out more about who the Pringuers were and where they came from. Global in scope, I will focus initially on instances of the name found in the UK. The study, which commenced in July 2020, will research and store data not just from standard genealogical databases, but also from other sources where the name is mentioned.

As is often the case, the name is misheard and misspelt in records. So far, the three common variants identified are:

• PRINGNER
• PRINQUER
• PRINGEUR

The name is believed to have originated in France, possibly from a place called Pringe in the department of Sarthe, or from a corrupted form of Perrin Gault, a hamlet in the former department of l'Orne. The latter gave rise to the surnames Pringee and Pringault of which Pringuer most likely derives¹.

^1. https://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/Pringuer

The name is recorded in Canterbury, Kent, as early as the 17th-century, where Pringuers were named in the registers of the Wallon (or Stranger's) Church¹. Members of the Pringuer family were connected with the Hugenot Society well into the 1980s. In 1891, instances of the name are concentrated almost exclusively in Kent, London and Middlesex².

^1. Hovenden, R. (Ed) (1898). The Registers of the Wallon or Stranger's Church, Canterbury. Lymington: The Hugenot Society of London.

^2. https://www.ancestry.co.uk/name-origin?surname=pringuer