17th century surnames by parish

Here’s a list of the most common surnames in the mid-1600s, parish by parish, taken from the names in the Protestation Returns of 1641/42. This was a list which in theory included all men over 18, who were asked to swear allegiance to the Protestant religion. In fact, the lists for a few parishes have gone missing and these are indicated below. As for the page on 18th century surnames I’ve amalgamated spelling variants of names as far as possible and just entered the most common local spelling below.

I’ve included the top five names in each parish, as long as they numbered five or over. When there were fewer than three surnames with five examples I’ve included those names with three or four representatives to make up the top three.

Note that small parishes have fewer names so other sources (the obvious being the baptism, marriage and burial registers) could give us a very different picture.