Families of West Yorkshire
Leeds, Bradford, Halifax, the woollen ridings, the chapel towns, and the surname spine of textile West Yorkshire.
Tap a region of the map to see who held it.
Families seated in West Yorkshire
- RobinsonSon of Robin, the Danelaw's favourite -son, and the first woman President of Ireland.
- ThompsonThe northern Thomases.
- HallAt the hall.
- CookThe cook.
- BrontëThe howling moor, Haworth Parsonage in one breath.
- FisherThe fisher, and the Bishop of Rochester at Tower Hill.
- HolmesThe holme, dry ground in the wet country.
- JacksonSon of Jack, the industrial north's signature.
- BennettBlessed Benedict, Lancashire knots it tight.
- MillerThe miller, water and wind before steam.
- SimpsonSimon's son, Tyne to Tees, and the Edinburgh obstetrician of chloroform.
- WaltonThe settlement of strangers, England mapped it eighty times.
- WebsterShe wove, northern -ster craft name.
- BatesBartholomew's short name, northern genitive.
- MortonThe moor settlement, marcher villages.
- EllisSon of Elijah, the prophet's name in Tudor English compression.
- WilkinsonSon of little William, the northern patronymic that bored Watt's cylinders.
- BoothFrom the herdsman's hut, the northern Norse-locative that gave the Salvation Army its founder.
- HudsonSon of Hudd, the Yorkshire patronymic carried into Hudson Bay.
- HansonSon of Hann, a Pennine patronymic.
- BurtonThe fortified farmstead, a name from a hundred villages.
- DawsonSon of Daw, a Yorkshire patronymic.
- AtkinsonSon of Atkin, a name from the northern dales.
- BradleyThe broad clearing in the wood.
- SharpThe keen one, a nickname kept.
- MyersDweller by the mire, or the steward at his post.
Historic ties to West Yorkshire
Families with historic but not core ground here.
Champions made here
Famous bearers whose lives or work root in West Yorkshire.
- James MasonThe Huddersfield wool merchant's son who gave up architecture for the stage, became the highest-paid actor in British cinema, and earned three Best Actor Oscar nominations across a Hollywood career.
- Alan BennettThe Leeds butcher's son whose Beyond the Fringe broke open the post-war British comedy stage, and who went on to write the Talking Heads television monologues and the prizewinning The History Boys across a sixty-year working life.
- Herbert ChapmanThe Yorkshire mining engineer who invented the modern football manager, built title-winning dynasties at Huddersfield and Arsenal, and died in harness with the game remade in his image.
- Thomas SpencerThe Skipton-born cashier whose three-hundred-pound partnership in 1894 with a Leeds market-stall trader founded the firm that became the largest retailer in modern Britain.
- The Brontë SistersThe three sisters of the parsonage at Haworth above the West Yorkshire moors who in 1847 published, between them, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey, three of the central English novels of the nineteenth century, under the male pseudonyms Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell.