Family names of the United Kingdom: A new research project in British anthroponomastics

Hanks, Patrick; McClure, Peter; Coates, Richard

Abstract

We present a major new research project in surname studies in Britain. The project is called Family Names of the United Kingdom (abbreviated to FaNUK). It is a 4-year project based at the Bristol Centre for Linguistics in the University of the West of England,funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) of Great Britain. The researchers are supported by a number of expert consultants, including in particular second author Peter McClure. The database software is provided by the Faculty of Informatics at Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic.

The main purpose of the project is to study the etymological origins, history, and geographical distribution of “established” or traditional English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, and Cornish surnames. However, the modern world defies simplistic categorization, and we know that over 300,000 of the 378,782 different surnames in Britain today are the names of recent immigrants from a vast number of countries including but by no means restricted to the countries of the former British empire, while another 30,000 are longer-established but very rare. 14,452 had fewer than 100 bearers in 1997, but each had more than 20 bearers in the 1881 census. That leaves 43,877 surnames that are both long-established and fairly frequent (i.e. they have more than 100 bearers each today), and they are the subject of what we refer to as “the main task” of FaNUK in this paper.

• Presentation Conference Type: Other
• Conference Name: 24th International Congress of Onomastic Sciences
• Start Date: Sep 5, 2011
• End Date: Sep 9, 2011
• Publication Date: Sep 8, 2011
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 8, 2019
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Keywords: family names, UK, British anthroponomastics
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/959251
• Publisher URL: http://www.catalannewsagency.com/society-science/item/barcelona-hosts-the-24th-edition-of-the-international-congress-on-onomastic-sciences
• Additional Information: Additional Information : This paper is placed here as a convenient general introduction to the Family Names project (2010-14) as originally conceived and begun.; Title of Conference or Conference Proceedings : 24th International Congress of Onomastic Sciences, Barcelona, 2011