Check out the surname dictionaries, even the mammoth Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland, and you’ll find Curnow classed as a locative name, a form of Kernow, the Cornish for Cornwall and a surname presumably given to a Cornishman. But this simple and apparently clearcut explanation may not be the right one.
First, why would someone be named in the Cornish language as a Cornishman when they lived among other folk, virtually all of whom would also have been Cornish? It doesn’t seem to be a very effective discriminator.
Second, the historical pattern of the forerunners of the name looks curious. The modern distribution of the surname, concentrated on the west, is misleading. The spelling Curnow began to appear from the 1580s, at first on the Lizard. Before that time the name was usually Cornow or sometimes in the east of Cornwall Cornew. Significantly, in the early 1500s it was found scattered across the land and was not confined to the Cornish-speaking districts, a surprising distribution given its supposed emergence among Cornish-speakers.
Even Robert Morton Nance, the father of the Cornish linguistic revival, had his doubts, describing the origin of Curnow as ‘less clear’ than might be thought. He suggested a Cornish language nickname from the Cornish corn, meaning horn, although that would hardly explain the presence of the name in east Cornwall in the 1500s.
Curnow comes in as equal number 68 in our list of the most frequent surnames in Cornwall in 1861. Here’s the rest down to number 69. You can check out the early maps of these here.
| rank | surname | type | number of households |
| 61 | Hawke | multiple | 186 |
| 62 | Dawe/s | personal name | 197 |
| =63 | Lobb | place-name | 197 |
| =63 | Paull | personal name | 197 |
| 65 | Lawry/Lowry | personal name | 196 |
| 66 | Ellis | personal name | 194 |
| =68 | Chapman | occupational name | 190 |
| =68 | Curnow | nickname? | 188 |
| =68 | Warren | personal name | 187 |
Further details of most of these names can also be found in my The Surnames of Cornwall.
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Cornish studies resources 
Any suggestions as to source? I had the idea that it was probably from people who had gone elsewhere then returned. By analogy, in the 1522 Military Survey we see more than 20 Bret(t)ons, 7 Franks, 7 Germans 1 Welshman. As to the surname itself – Cornow/Cornew (4), Cornwall (5) Cornish (11) no Curnow.
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Interesting point. But if it was for temporary migrants when were they named and by whom? The naming must logically have occurred outside Cornwall. If named in Cornish when a migrant they themselves must have been the namers. Yet the distribution in the early 1500s shows no obvious correlation with the geography of the language. The spellings bear out the point that Cornow began to be replaced by Curnow in the 1580s.
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Love it !!Sent from my iPhone
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