Wells

By the springs, the southern-English locative that named the War of the Worlds.

Origin: South East, England
Famous bearer: H.G. Wells (1866-1946), British novelist; The Time Machine (1895), The War of the Worlds (1898), The Outline of History (1920)
Register: English family

The Wells arms and country

Coat of armsArmorial Bearings of the WELLS of HerefordBorne by the Hereford line, one branch of the name rather than all of it.Rs-nourse · CC BY-SA 4.0
Coat of armsArmorial Bearings of the WELLS family of HerefordBorne by the Hereford line, one branch of the name rather than all of it.Rs-nourse · CC BY-SA 4.0

Coat of arms — Granted to an individual and inherited down that one documented line — these are the arms of particular families of the name, not of everyone who shares the surname.

Territory of Wells

CoreHistoric reach

The seat of Wells

Seat vacant

Chief

No one leads the Wells community yet. When the movement opens, you can stand for its leadership, or help elect whoever does.

Current mission

No shared goal set yet. Once Wells has leadership, it sets the public focus: a restoration, a gathering, a real-world project that helps its own.

The Wells clan is being rebuilt. Join the waiting list for the movement today, and you help decide who leads it and what it does.

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What does the Wells name mean?

Locative, dweller by the springs or wells (Old English wella, a spring of water). The Wells surname is locative on the many English springs-and-wells parishes (the Wells Somerset cathedral-city being the most-famous Wells locative), and crystallised as a hereditary surname across the late-medieval surname-fixation period. The Wells surname is distributed across the southern-English counties with a particular concentration in the Wessex-and-Home-Counties medieval-water-source parish-belt.

The history of Wells

Wells is a southern-English locative surname of the medieval-village water-source pool. The Wells byname (the dweller by the spring) crystallised into the modern hereditary surname across the Tudor surname-fixation period.

Herbert George Wells (1866-1946), the Bromley, Kent-born British science-fiction novelist, essayist and political-thinker, is the foundational modern bearer of the surname. His 1895-to-1898 scientific-romance series (The Time Machine 1895, The Island of Doctor Moreau 1896, The Invisible Man 1897, The War of the Worlds 1898) established the foundational template of the modern English-language science-fiction genre. His 1900-to-1945 political-essay-and-social-realist-novel output (Anticipations 1901, A Modern Utopia 1905, Tono-Bungay 1909, The Outline of History 1920) made him the most-read English-language popular-essayist of the early-twentieth-century period.

Allan Wells (b. 1952), the Edinburgh-born Scottish sprinter, took the gold medal in the 100-metre at the Moscow 1980 Olympic Games at the thirty-year-old age (the oldest 100-metre Olympic gold-medalist in Olympic-history). Sir John Wells (1925-2018), the Sussex-born senior English Royal-Marine general, was a distinguished Royal-Marines commander.

Historic Places, Rebuilt

Explore the streets and seats the Wells name knew, rebuilt with AI as they stood in history.

Or recreate your own castle →

Historic Places, Rebuilt · New

Explore London in 1818Enter →

St Paul's, Covent Garden and the gaslit West End, Regency London, soot-hazed and horse-drawn.

The castles of the homeland

The great strongholds of the homeland, look one up, see what it looked like in its prime, and recreate it to explore.

Windsor CastleRestored · prime 1820

Tower of LondonRestored · prime 1285

Bamburgh CastleRestored · prime 1904

All castles in England → · Strongest castles in England → · Castles of Europe

Play As Your Clan

Explore history as a WellsStart your story →

Hold a real castle against whatever you choose to send at it, take a ship out in her own service years, or stand at the shoulder of someone the record remembers. The chronicler sets the scene; the deeds are yours.

Notable bearers of the Wells name

H.G. Wells (1866-1946), British novelist; The Time Machine (1895), The War of the Worlds (1898), The Outline of History (1920)
Allan Wells (b. 1952), Scottish sprinter; Olympic 100-metre gold medallist 1980
Orson Welles (1915-1985), American actor-director; the spelling variant Welles is a different surname-line, but is occasionally bracketed with Wells

Stories of Wells

H.G. Wells publishes The War of the Worlds
1898
In late January 1898, on the publication-day of Tuesday the eighteenth of January 1898 at the London publishing-house William Heinemann at 21 Bedford Street in Covent Garden, the thirty-one-year-old Bromley, Kent-born British scientific-romance novelist Herbert George Wells, on the strength of the three-previous-scientific-romance novels he had published across 1895-to-1897 (The Time Machine 1895, The Island of Doctor Moreau 1896, The Invisible Man 1897 on the Wells-Heinemann-and-Pearson's-Magazine publishing-circuit), published the completed-volume of his fourth scientific-romance novel The War of the Worlds (the Martian-invasion-of-southern-England novel that had been serialised in Pearson's Magazine across the April-to-December 1897 nine-issue serialisation under the original-serial-title The Coming of the Martians). The War-of-the-Worlds is the foundational alien-invasion novel of the modern English-language science-fiction tradition: the Martian-tripod-machines-and-heat-ray-and-Black-Smoke invasion-narrative across the Surrey-and-Middlesex-and-London southern-English-counties geographic setting, the Wells narrator-walker reporting from the Woking-and-Horsell-Common landing-site through the Surrey-Middlesex retreat-to-London and the Whitechapel-and-Crystal-Palace London-collapse-period, the Martians' subsequent bacterial-collapse on the Common-cold-and-related-Earth-microorganism immunity-failure. The War-of-the-Worlds has been continuously in publication since 1898, has been adapted into the Orson-Welles 1938-Mercury-Theatre-on-the-Air radio-broadcast (the famous-Halloween-Eve broadcast that produced the American-public-panic on the Martian-invasion-fictional-broadcast misinterpretation), the 1953-Byron-Haskin Paramount-Pictures film, the 1978-Jeff-Wayne progressive-rock musical-album, and the 2005-Steven-Spielberg Paramount-Pictures film with Tom Cruise. The War-of-the-Worlds is the foundational template of the modern science-fiction alien-invasion narrative-genre.
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Frequently asked

What does the surname Wells mean?

Where does the Wells family come from?

The Wells family is rooted in South East and South West, in England. Within that, the name was particularly concentrated in Kent, Surrey and Somerset & Bristol. The atlas page for the name records the historical territory it has held over the centuries.

Where did the Wells family historically hold territory?

At its greatest historical extent, the Wells name has been concentrated in Dorset & Wiltshire, Hampshire & the Isle of Wight and London. The atlas page distinguishes the core territory of the name from this wider historical reach with hatched silhouettes on the map.

Is Wells English or Irish?

Wells is a English surname; its home on this atlas is England, where the historical territory and family record of the name are concentrated. The same or similar spellings can surface in Irish records, but the lineage documented on this page is the English one.

How old is the Wells surname?

Wells is a southern-English locative surname of the medieval-village water-source pool. European hereditary surnames crystallised broadly between the 12th and 14th centuries, and the Wells name took its modern form within that long settlement.

What is the Wells family known for?

By the springs, the southern-English locative that named the War of the Worlds. Wells is a southern-English locative surname of the medieval-village water-source pool.

Is there a Wells family crest or coat of arms?

There is no single coat of arms that belongs to everyone named Wells. Heraldic arms were granted to individuals and descend through specific documented lines, so a "family crest" matched to a surname alone is decorative rather than genealogical. This page shows the coat of arms recorded for the name in the public heraldic record, with the specific line each belongs to named in its caption.

Who is the most famous Wells?

The best-known bearer of the Wells name is H.G. Wells (1866-1946), British novelist; The Time Machine (1895), The War of the Worlds (1898), The Outline of History (1920). Other prominent figures of the family include Allan Wells (b. 1952), Scottish sprinter; Olympic 100-metre gold medallist 1980 and Orson Welles (1915-1985), American actor-director; the spelling variant Welles is a different surname-line, but is occasionally bracketed with Wells.

Who are some famous Wellses?

Notable bearers of the Wells name include H.G. Wells (1866-1946), British novelist; The Time Machine (1895), The War of the Worlds (1898), The Outline of History (1920), Allan Wells (b. 1952), Scottish sprinter; Olympic 100-metre gold medallist 1980 and Orson Welles (1915-1985), American actor-director; the spelling variant Welles is a different surname-line, but is occasionally bracketed with Wells. Each is profiled on the family page, with cross-links to the geography, stories, and historical events tied to their life.

What stories are told about the Wells family?

The Wells family is associated with H.G. Wells publishes The War of the Worlds. Each story has its own page on this site with the full account, the date, the location, and the other families involved.

What is the story of H.G. Wells publishes The War of the Worlds?

In late January 1898, on the publication-day of Tuesday the eighteenth of January 1898 at the London publishing-house William Heinemann at 21 Bedford Street in Covent Garden, the thirty-one-year-old Bromley, Kent-born British scientific-romance novelist Herbert George Wells, on the strength of the three-previous-scientific-romance novels he had published across 1895-to-1897 (The Time Machine 1895, The Island of Doctor Moreau 1896, The Invisible Man 1897 on the Wells-Heinemann-and-Pearson's-Magazine publishing-circuit), published the completed-volume of his fourth scientific-romance novel The War of the Worlds (the Martian-invasion-of-southern-England novel that had been serialised in Pearson's Magazine across the April-to-December 1897 nine-issue serialisation under the original-serial-title The Coming of the Martians). The War-of-the-Worlds is the foundational alien-invasion novel of the modern English-language science-fiction tradition: the Martian-tripod-machines-and-heat-ray-and-Black-Smoke invasion-narrative across the Surrey-and-Middlesex-and-London southern-English-counties geographic setting, the Wells narrator-walker reporting from the Woking-and-Horsell-Common landing-site through the Surrey-Middlesex retreat-to-London and the Whitechapel-and-Crystal-Palace London-collapse-period, the Martians' subsequent bacterial-collapse on the Common-cold-and-related-Earth-microorganism immunity-failure. The event is dated to 1898.

Where is the Wells surname found today?

England is the primary historical home of the Wells surname. In the modern era, the name is also borne across the wider diaspora, particularly in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, where families carry the line of descent from the same England origin recorded on this page.

What does the Clan Rising page for the Wells family cover?

The Clan Rising page for the Wells family covers the meaning of the surname, the historical geography of the name, famous bearers of the name, traditional stories and the seat of the head of the family. Each section is linked to the underlying atlas of England so the name can be read in the geography that shaped it.

Who is the head of the Wells family today?

The seat for the head of the Wells family is currently vacant on this register. Clan Rising is rebuilding the chief and family structure for the modern era, and the family page allows readers to claim the seat or pledge to the name.