Linacre (surname)

Linacre is a surname. Over time, the name has been spelt a variety of different ways including: Linaker, Lineker, Linneker, Liniker, Linnecar, Leneker, Linnegar, Lineker , Lynaker, Lynacre, Lynneker and Lenniker. As of about 2016, 411 people bore one or another variant of this surname in Great Britain and 6 in Ireland; in 1881, 155 people in Great Britain bore one. ^[1]

Etymology

Lynacre Coat of Arms

The surname is of medieval English origin. It originated as a locative name, given to people from places called Linacre. Such place-names in turn derive from Middle English līn ('flax') and aker ('field'), thus denoting places associated with a flax-field. ^{[1] [2]}

The name is first attested in the Domesday Book of 1086, which mentions a Cambridgeshire landholder named Godwin de Linacra. ^{[1] [3]}

The Linacre family was also prominent in the villages of Hackenthorpe and Eckington in Derbyshire in the 13th and 14th centuries. ^[4] By 1881, within Great Britain, the name was mostly concentrated in Derbyshire, Lancashire, and the West Riding of Yorkshire. ^[1]

People

People that bear the surname include:

• Billy Linacre (1924–2010), English footballer
• Sir Gordon Linacre (1920–2015), Royal Air Force officer, afterwards journalist and press baron
• Harry Linacre (1880–1957), English footballer
• John Linacre (born 1955), English footballer
• Thomas Linacre (c.1460–1524), English humanist scholar
• Gary Lineker (born 1960), English footballer

References

1. The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland, ed. by Patrick Hanks, Richard Coates, and Peter McClure, 4 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), III, p. 1592 [s.v. Linacre]; ISBN   978-0-19-967776-4.
2. "Surname Database: Lineker Last Name Origin".
3. "Godwine 285".
4. Cox, John Charles (1875). Notes on the Churches of Derbyshire: The hundred of Scarsdale. 1875. Palmer and Edmunds.