Families of Surrey
Guildford, the North Downs, the Surrey weald, the home county that fed Tudor London with its gentry.
Tap a region of the map to see who held it.
Families seated in Surrey
- KingWhen the village crowned someone 'king' for a day, and the jest lasted six centuries.
- CooperThe cooper, cask and keg.
- GreenThe green, the common before it was a party colour.
- WhiteThe fair one.
- MasonThe operative mason.
- AdamsSon of Adam.
- ParkerThe parker.
- BaileyThe steward of the bailey, castle administration in one syllable.
- CarterThe carter, and the man who opened Tutankhamun's tomb.
- WebbThe weaver.
- PayneThe villager's joke, worn with honour now.
- BarnesBy the barn.
- WestThe west.
- ButlerThe cellarer's name, and the Earls of Ormond of Kilkenny.
- HarrisHarry's son, the West Country spelling, and the Welsh chapel surname of Howell Harris.
- BakerThe baker, oven smoke in every market town.
- StevensStephen's line, southwestern -ens spelling.
- JenkinsLittle John, Welsh thumbprint on English registers.
- MillsBy the mill, wheels on every river.
- PorterThe gate, the burden, same spelling.
- SaundersAlexander's son, Cornish and Wessex thick.
- HopkinsLittle Hodge, border favourite.
- MarshallThe stable office, court rank, surname for thousands.
- SpencerThe steward, from pantry to peerage.
- HuntThe hunter, chase and warren.
- DayDavid, dairy, or daylight jest.
- ColeCoal-black or Saint Nicholas' pet form.
- CurtisThe courteous one, Norman manners joke.
- LawrenceLaurence of Rome, England's Registers repeat him.
- HaynesHainaut or hedged field, context splits.
- KnightServant of the knight, not the knight himself.
- NewmanThe new man, the village byname that named a Cardinal.
- WellsBy the springs, the southern-English locative that named the War of the Worlds.
- HartAt the sign of the hart.
- SuttonThe south farmstead.
Historic ties to Surrey
Families with historic but not core ground here.
Champions made here
Famous bearers whose lives or work root in Surrey.
- Ford Madox FordThe grandson of the painter Ford Madox Brown who founded the English Review, discovered D. H. Lawrence, collaborated with Joseph Conrad, and wrote The Good Soldier and the Parade's End tetralogy, two of the foundational modernist English novels.
- Samuel PalmerThe south-London bookseller's son who met William Blake at nineteen, gathered a circle of disciples called the Ancients, and produced at Shoreham the visionary landscapes that became the foundation of English visionary art.
- Dame Julie AndrewsThe Walton-on-Thames child star with a four-octave range who created Eliza in the original My Fair Lady on Broadway, won the 1965 Best Actress Academy Award for Mary Poppins, and starred in The Sound of Music, one of the most successful films in the history of cinema.
- Daniel AndrewsThe Williamstown Labor staffer who entered the Victorian parliament for Mulgrave in 2002, led Victorian Labor from 2010, and served as Premier of Victoria for three consecutive terms from 2014 to 2023, leading the state through its COVID-19 response.
Stories told here
Legends set in Surrey, from any family that carries them.