Families of Somerset & Bristol
Bath's Roman waters, Bristol's Atlantic port, the Mendips, and the cider apple country of the Levels.
Tap a region of the map to see who held it.
Families seated in Somerset & Bristol
- 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.
- WellsBy the springs, the southern-English locative that named the War of the Worlds.
- BurnhamThe homestead by the stream.
- HardyThe bold one, a Norman nickname.
- WheelerThe wheelwright at his bench.
- PearceFrom Piers, the Norman face of Peter.
- PetersSon of Peter, the rock-name made patronymic.
Historic ties to Somerset & Bristol
Families with historic but not core ground here.
Champions made here
Famous bearers whose lives or work root in Somerset & Bristol.
- Sir Henry ColeThe Bath-born civil servant who reformed the Public Record Office, designed the first commercial Christmas card in 1843, organised the Great Exhibition of 1851 with Prince Albert, and built the South Kensington museum quarter around the profits.
- Alfred MarshallThe Bermondsey bank cashier's son who wrote Principles of Economics in 1890, founded the Cambridge economics tripos, and turned political economy into the technical discipline it has been since.
- Thomas YoungThe Milverton Quaker prodigy who read fluent Greek at six and fourteen languages by fourteen, established the wave nature of light with the double-slit experiment in 1801, made the first decipherment of Egyptian demotic, and devised what is now called Young's modulus.
- Ralph AllenThe St Blazey innkeeper's son who reformed the British cross-post system, made the General Post Office financially viable, bought the Combe Down quarries and built Prior Park from his own stone, and was the Squire Allworthy of Henry Fielding's Tom Jones.
- John LewisThe Shepton Mallet draper's apprentice who opened a single Oxford Street shop in 1864 and whose son turned the firm into the John Lewis Partnership, owned in trust by every person who works in it.
- Sir Allen LaneThe Bristol-born junior publisher whose 1935 founding of Penguin Books at sixpence the volume produced the paperback revolution that took the great works of English-language fiction and non-fiction out of the hardback club-library trade and onto the railway-bookstall rack of every reader in the country.