Families of Devon
Exeter, Plymouth, the two coasts and Dartmoor, the seafaring county that gave England Drake, Raleigh and the Mayflower port.
Tap a region of the map to see who held it.
Families seated in Devon
- HillOn the hill, and the Penny Post and the National Trust.
- WhiteThe fair one.
- AdamsSon of Adam.
- JamesFrom Jacob, through Latin Iacomus to Welsh Iago to Tudor English James.
- BaileyThe steward of the bailey, castle administration in one syllable.
- PhillipsSon of Philip, Welsh ap Phylip and Norman patronymic under one spelling.
- CoxThe cock, youth and pride.
- PayneThe villager's joke, worn with honour now.
- LongThe long one.
- DavisSon of David, one spelling among England's commonest.
- MartinThe saint's name, English and Norman registers alike.
- HarrisHarry's son, the West Country spelling, and the Welsh chapel surname of Howell Harris.
- StevensStephen's line, southwestern -ens spelling.
- JenkinsLittle John, Welsh thumbprint on English registers.
- PerryPear-orchard or Peter's kin.
- FordThe crossing, stamped on Shakespearian country.
- StoneThe stone, boundary-mark name.
- FoxThe fox, nickname that stuck.
- SaundersAlexander's son, Cornish and Wessex thick.
- HopkinsLittle Hodge, border favourite.
- HarveyBreton battle-name, English orchard now.
- MatthewsMatthew's son, March and Welsh edge.
- LaneThe lane, hedge-bottom dweller.
- HuntThe hunter, chase and warren.
- ColeCoal-black or Saint Nicholas' pet form.
- WestonThe western farm, toponym epidemic.
- LawrenceLaurence of Rome, England's Registers repeat him.
- RogersSon of Roger, the famous-spear Norman first name.
- ReynoldsSon of Reynold, the counsel-ruler Norman first name.
- HardyThe bold one, a Norman nickname.
- PearceFrom Piers, the Norman face of Peter.
- PetersSon of Peter, the rock-name made patronymic.
Historic ties to Devon
Families with historic but not core ground here.
Champions made here
Famous bearers whose lives or work root in Devon.
- Sir Francis BaringThe Exeter cloth-merchant's son who in 1762 founded the first merchant bank in Britain, and built it into the institution the French ambassador in 1818 named as the sixth great power of Europe.
- Sir Joshua ReynoldsThe Plympton schoolmaster's son who in December 1768 became the first President of the Royal Academy of Arts and through the next twenty-three years gave the fifteen Discourses on Art that founded the institutional vocabulary of British academic painting.
- John DavisThe Devon-born navigator whose three Arctic voyages of 1585 to 1587 in search of the north-west passage charted the Greenland coast and the Davis Strait, whose 1599 manual the Seaman's Secrets was the standard English-language navigational textbook for the next two centuries, and who in 1605 piloted the first English East India Company voyage to the Spice Islands.