The surname Eddy is used by descendants of a number of English, Irish and Scottish families.
Frank R. Holmes, in his Directory of the Ancestral Heads of New England Families, 1600-1700, proposes two possible origins; the Gaelic eddee, "instructor", or from the Saxon ed and ea, "backwards" and "water", a whirlpool or eddy, making the surname Eddy a place-name. Another possible origin is the Saxon root ead, "success" or "prosperity". Ead occurs in numerous commonly used names, as Edgar, Edmund, Edward, Edwin, and the outdated Edwy. John Eddy of Taunton spells the name Eddway in the earliest record so far found. Eddy could also be a diminutive of any one of these names. [1]
Robert Ferguson, in his work on English Surnames, believes that Eddy is a place-name: “Eday, Eady, Eddy are from ead, prosperity. Hence the name of the rock Eddiston, on which the celebrated light house is built. From this word are compounded a great number of Anglo-Saxon names of which we have Edward, Edmund, Edgar, Edw Edwin.” [2]
One of the first mentions that is close to the form of Eddy, is the name of the priest Eddi or Edde, Latinized into Eddius. He went to Northumbria from Canterbury with Bishop Wilfrid (or Wilfrith) in 669, and later took the name Stephanus. He taught the Roman method of chanting, and in 709 he was in the monastery of Ripon, where he wrote a life of Wilfrid in Latin.
In the Domesday Book , the name Eddeu is used in a description of Little Abington, Cambridgeshire, and during the time of Edward the First there were a number of people named Ede, Edde, and Edwy on the tax collection rolls of Worcestershire. There is a record in Hertfordshire, of a William Edy, Gentleman, in 1486. Edie, Eddy, Eddye, Edshune and Edye are found in numerous records in Gloucestershire from 1545 onward. At Woodbridge, Suffolk, Eyde is found as a surname between 1599 and 1610.
Starting from 1570 in the records of many parishes of the Archdeaconry Court of Cornwall, the following surnames are found: Edy, Eady, Eedy, Ede, Edye, Eddey, and Eddy. In Bristol, the town where William Eddye, the Vicar, was born, a number of wills from the late 16th century have the surname of Eddie, Eddye or Eddy. Ade, Adie, Addy, Eadie are common Scottish surnames. These may be forms of the name “Adam”. David Eadie of Moneaght, Scotland, was granted a coat of arms in 1672.
In North America, the largest family group who bears the Eddy surname are descended from two brothers, John and Samuel, who immigrated to America on October 29, 1630, on a ship called Handmaid. Their father, William Eddye, was the Vicar of the church in Cranbrook, England, from 1586 to 1616 and was born in Bristol in the mid-16th century. Other Northern American "patriarchs" are John Eddy who lived in Taunton, Massachusetts in the late 17th century; John Eddy of Woodbridge, New Jersey, (Scottish) who immigrated in the early 18th century; James Eddy, born in Dublin, Ireland, around 1712, and immigrated in 1753; Thomas Eddy, immigrated in the late 18th century to Fort Ann, New York, from Ireland; brothers William and John Eddy, immigrated from Ireland to New York city in the mid 19th century; and William Dave Eddy, who came to the United States from Cornwall, England, in 1887. There is a currently large family of Eddys in Cornwall.
The Boston Brahmins or Boston elite are members of Boston's traditional upper class. They are often associated with a cultivated New England or Mid-Atlantic dialect and accent, Harvard University, Anglicanism, and traditional British American customs and clothing. Descendants of the earliest English colonists are typically considered to be the most representative of the Boston Brahmins. They are considered White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs).
Fowler is an English and/or Scots surname. Its origin is the Old English fugelere, an occupational name for a bird-catcher or hunter of wild birds. Old English fugel or fugol means "bird" and has evolved into the modern word fowl.
Rogers is an English patronymic surname deriving from the given name of Roger commonly used by the Normans and meaning "son of Roger". Variants include Rodgers.
Crane is a surname. The name is a derivative of "Cron" in Old English or is the English translation of the German "Krahn" or "Kranich." According to The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain & Ireland, "Cron," "Krahn" and "Kranich" all mean "crown" in both Old English and German respectively. According to the same source, "Crone" is also compared with "Crane", "Crown", "Cron" and "Crowne". In some places in Britain, "Crane", when used as a name, can also be a reference to a tall, slender man, similar to the bird, "Crane" or to someone with long legs. Both the modern English version of "Crane" and modern German versions of "Krahn" or "Kranich" are more commonly associated with the tall bird than with a crown and the Old English and Old German translations have become less common.
Dana as a surname may have several origins. In England, it came from dann, the valley of a meadow, and it may mean the dweller of that valley. In Continental Europe, it probably came from Dane. This surname is related to Danese in Italy and it can be found mostly in the Piedmont region. It may also be a modification of Huguenot French origin, probably a variant of d'Aunay, of geographical origin. It may be also a Gaelic patronymic, since it is a common forename in Ireland. Dana is a relatively common surname in the US, ranking 7161 out of 88,799 in the 1990 U.S. Census. Dana is also the Persian word for wisdom.
Mather or Mathers is a Scottish surname, first documented in Kincardineshire, Scotland. and may refer to:
Hynes is a surname, many examples of which originate as the anglicisation the Irish name Ó hEidhin.
Phelps is an English surname. The name is originated as a patronymic form of the name Philip. The name Philip is derived from the Greek name Philippos, which is composed of two elements: the first, philein, "to love"; the second, hippos, "horse". The Dictionary of American Family Names states that the surname Phelps is generally found in the south-western part of England.
The surname Patrick is Scottish and English in origin: from the Anglo-Norman French Middle English and Older Scots personal name Patrick. In some cases it is an Anglicised form of the Gaelic Mac Phádraig, derived from world elements meaning "son of Patrick". This Gaelic surname is derived from the Latin Patricius, which is in turn derived from word elements meaning "member of the patrician class". In other cases, the surname Patrick is a shortened form of the surnames Mulpatrick and Fitzpatrick. The surname Patrick appears in Ireland due to Scottish emigration. People with the surname Patrick include:
Webber (/ˈwɛbər/) is an English occupational surname meaning weaver.
Atherton is a toponymic surname. One origin is the town of Atherton, historically in Lancashire, England.
The surname Whiting is of Saxon origin meaning 'the white or fair offspring'. The Saxon suffix "-ing" denotes 'son of' or 'offspring'. It is a patronymic name from the Old English pre-7th Century 'Hwita' meaning 'the white' or 'fair one'. The surname first appears in documentation from the late 11th Century and has a number of variant forms ranging from 'Whiteing', and 'Whitting' to 'Witting'. However, the name was first found in Devon where it was seated both before and after the Norman Conquest.
Drennan is a surname of Irish origin. Variations of the name are found primarily in Ireland, Scotland, and the United States. The surname is purportedly derived from the Gaelic Ó Droighneáin, Ó Draighnáin, or Ua Draighnen, meaning "descendant of Draighnen", or "descendant of blackthorn". Variant spellings include Drennen, Drenning, Drennon, Drinan, Drinnan, Drinnon, and Drynan. Thornton is another Anglicized surname from the same original Gaelic form.
Cowan is a surname of both Scottish-Irish and English origins.
Hayman is both a surname and a given name. Notable people with the name include:
Forbes is a surname. It derives from the Scottish Clan Forbes. Descendants of the Scottish clan have also been present in Ireland since the 17th century. The name of an unrelated Irish sept, Mac Fhirbhisigh or MacFirbis, was also anglicised as Forbes.
Belcher is an English surname of Norman origin. Notable people with the surname include:
Sarah James Eddy was an American artist and photographer who specialized in the platinotype process, also known as platinum prints. She was active in abolition, reform, and suffragist movements, and was a philanthropist as well as instrumental in the founding of the Rhode Island Humane Society. She was inducted into the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame in 2017.
Loehr is a surname of German origin. Notable people with the surname include: