Families of Birmingham & the Black Country
Birmingham, Coventry, Dudley, Wolverhampton, the metalworking conurbation, the foundry trades, and the surname pool of the second city.
Tap a region of the map to see who held it.
Families seated in Birmingham & the Black Country
- WrightThe maker, every guild town shaped one.
- WoodBy the wood.
- HillOn the hill, and the Penny Post and the National Trust.
- WardThe watchman.
- TurnerThe lathe.
- CoxThe cock, youth and pride.
- DavisSon of David, one spelling among England's commonest.
- LeeThe meadow, and a clearing-name stamped on dozens of villages.
- BrooksBy the brook, every wet valley had one.
- ShawThe copse-edge, Lancashire loves it.
- PerryPear-orchard or Peter's kin.
- FordThe crossing, stamped on Shakespearian country.
- FoxThe fox, nickname that stuck.
- MatthewsMatthew's son, March and Welsh edge.
- LaneThe lane, hedge-bottom dweller.
- HayesThe enclosure, hedged common.
- WestonThe western farm, toponym epidemic.
- MorrisSon of Maurice, the Norman name that took English root.
- BradleyThe broad clearing in the wood.
Historic ties to Birmingham & the Black Country
Families with historic but not core ground here.
Champions made here
Famous bearers whose lives or work root in Birmingham & the Black Country.
- H. V. MortonThe newspaperman who wrote In Search of England in 1927, sold a million copies of it, and built the inter-war popular travel-writing tradition.
- Jess PhillipsThe Birmingham social-worker's daughter who ran Black Country Women's Aid through the post-austerity funding crisis, won the Labour seat of Birmingham Yardley in 2015, became Shadow Minister for Domestic Violence and Safeguarding, and is the Home Office Minister for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls.