Scroll down to your name and click on it. You can find more details on your surname in The Surnames of Cornwall.
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Cornwall: history, surnames and society, from Bernard Deacon
Scroll down to your name and click on it. You can find more details on your surname in The Surnames of Cornwall.
Cornish studies resources 
still not found my surname, Sprague. Usually found Redruth/ Gwennap.
I.have gone back to 1680 on the family tree with Sprague marriage to Lucy Thomas.
male descendants all being miners around Redruth/Gwennap
Pauline Sprague
pauline.anne@sky.com
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Hi Pauline, You won’t find it here either I’m afraid. The name Sprague did feature on my orgiginal shortlist as there were 14 households headed by a Sprague or similar in 1861, the name as you suggest being most common around Gwennap and Calstock (the latter probably mining migrants). But it was no more common in Cornwall than elsewhere in the UK in the 19th century, which meant it didn’t qualify for inclusion. The earliest example I can find on the OPC database was a Bennett Sprage married at Truro in 1655. The surname was confined to the Gwennap/Truro district in the late 17th century with the exception of a family line at Looe, where it was first spelt Sprague (as opposed to Sprage) in 1665. the Sprague spelling then also turns up at Truro a few years later. However, we find Thomas and John Sprage at Philleigh on the Roseland in the Protestation Returns (1640/41) which suggests the name was around earlier in the 17th century.
As for its origin, Reaney suggested it was a dialect form of ‘spark’ and presumably a medieval nickname. However, although there were no Sprages in the surviving parish registers or tax lists of Cornwall in the 1500s, there were a few Spriggs. There was also a handful of Spriggs or Spreggs in the Protestation Returns, one of whom was significantly found in East Looe, where later Spragues appear. As the surname Spriggs disappeared in the 19th century (at least in Cornwall) I wonder if in Cornwall Sprage and then Sprague was a spelling variant of the earlier Sprigg/s.
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Is Sprague a misspelling of spargoe, not joining the ‘o’ fully and reversing the ‘ar’ to ‘ra’.
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An ingenious derivation but I think not. The final -ue in the name was a common device in Middle English to show the previous vowel was long – think ‘league’, which suggests it emerged in an English-speaking environment. The name is supposed to be a respelling of Spragg, which itself evolved from Spark – probably in Wiltshire. The first Spragues in Cornwall seem to have appeared in the 1670s – at Looe and then at Truro. From Truro the surname was taken to Gwennap in the 18th century, where it ramified with the growth of that parish. Although the surname Spargo (from a place in Mabe) does also turn up at Truro and Gwennap slightly earlier my money would still be on a separate surname brought to Cornwall – the earliest C17th location at ports being the clincher.
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