Cornwall’s top surnames: the list continues

We’ve seen a list of the 20 or so commonest surnames in the nineteenth century. But what about the others? Over the next few months when I have time I’ll post the top 200 names (combining spelling variants as far as possible) in batches of ten, with their supposed type and the number of households with that name in 1861.

To recap, here’s the amended top 20.

rank	surname	type	number in 1861
1	Williams	personal name	1677
2	Thomas	personal name	1227
3	Richards	personal name	1049
4	Rowe	personal name	903
5	Stephens/Stevens	personal name	827
6	Martin	personal name	792
7	Harris	personal name	720
8	Mi(t)chell	personal name	701
9	Pearce	personal name	669
10	Roberts	personal name	625
11	James	personal name	615
12	Johns	personal name	593
13	Bennett/s	personal name	578
14	Nicholls/Nicholas	personal name	555
15	Pascoe	personal name?	549
16	Hosken/ing etc.	personal name	547
17	Symons/Semmens etc.	personal name	538
18	Davey/Davies	personal name	536
19	Jenkin	personal name	508
20	Hocken/ing etc.	personal name	484

And here’s the next ten.

21	Hicks	personal name	441
22	Phillips/Philps	personal name	424
23	Rogers	personal name	399
24	Harvey	personal name	398
25	Bray	place name	384
26	Matthew/s	personal name	348
27	Cock	multiple	330
28	Dunstan/one	personal name/place name	296
29	May	personal name	293
30	Oliver/Olver	personal name	292

Finally, we meet some names that didn’t arise from a first name. Cock for example was originally a nickname with various suggested meanings. It was widespread in Cornwall by the 1500s and the broad similarity of its distribution in the 1520s and the 1640s implies that it was already a fixed surname in most places in 1500.

Maps of all these surnames in the 1500s and 1641 can be found here.

Further details of most will be found in my The Surnames of Cornwall.