1. Williams

By now most readers won’t be too surprised to learn that Cornwall’s top surname – and by a long way, 35 per cent more frequent in 1861 than its nearest competitors – was Williams. William was a French version of the Germanic Willihelm that was brought to the British Isles by the Normans. By the 1200s it was the most popular male given name in southern Britain, although later overtaken by John.

Occasionally, one still meets the assertion that Williams became a common surname in Cornwall because of migration from Wales. This is of course nonsense. Nevertheless, its pre-eminence owes a lot to a social history that was similar to Wales in the existence of a living Celtic language and late surname formation. But, more so than Thomas or Richard, William was already in the 1400s likely to be encountered in east Cornwall, this adding to its later dominance.

William was quick to gain an <s>, 85 per cent having done so by the mid-1600s. Furthermore, by 1861 the distribution of this family name serves as a good surrogate for the geography of Cornwall’s mining industry at its peak. It’s also somehow fitting that it was a Williams family that proved to be the most adept entrepreneurs during Cornwall’s copper mining boom. Based in Gwennap, they made their fortune out of mining investments and then banking and smelting. By the 1850s, the leading branch of this family had bought the neo-Gothic Caerhays Castle in mid-Cornwall and was regarded as Cornwall’s wealthiest family. Number 1 in more ways than one, it seems.