Gordon Barlow

For me, Bruce looks like a Welsh name (by which I mean Brythonic, not Gaelic) because Bruce as a surname/clan-name would have (might have?) begun as ap-Ruce; Gaelic would have been Mc-Ruce or Cruse, by that reckoning. I think there was quite a bit of mixing in those early days, of British, Gaels, French, Ango-Saxons and native English. It would be nice if the DNA people could distinguish between Gaels and Britons, but I don't think they're able to do that yet, are they? My wife's ancestral surnames include Currie, Boyd, Russell, Bilsland, Paterson, and Buchanan - all from around the south-west of Scotland between Dumbarton and Carluke. Also a Bryce, in the late 1700s; close enough to Bruce, do you think? There were several clans of Russells, Curries, Patersons, etc, not necessarily related, so it's been difficult sorting out who was who!

Gordon Barlow

One thing it's always useful to bear in mind when dealing with names are the accents. Entries in Parish Registers reflect not only the way the Parish priests (or whoever wrote the entries) spelt the names, but also how they perceived the oral reports of the parishioners. In my family records I have the name Hayne, from Somerset in the 19th Century, which had variants Hain, Haynes and Haines in the same family (siblings!). I was told by a distant cousin that when they reached their new homeland (New South Wales) they held a family gathering at which they agreed on a common spelling. None of my people were recorded as Hine or Hines or Hinds - to the best of my knowledge - but it's almost certain that those names are simply variants of my Haynes.

Of course this principle (of changing perceptions and accents) must go way back. Think what the modern equivalents of the famous Hengist and Horsa might be. My best guess is Angus and Harris. There was confusion between the Kings called Arthur and Offa. (The latter would not have been pronounced like the standard English word "offer", because the vowel would have been like the way Americans pronounce "god" - i.e. gahd. And so on.)

Petals

My maiden name is related to France and the Norman Conquest when weavers came over from france. My married name is Scottish and a very large clan. We have done our direct family trees and the Scottish one was very easy to do as there are such good records in Scotland. My English one took more time. As has been said the name changes and is spelt differently in a lot of cases. We had to get copy documents to cross reference to find out exactly who was who. Of course the parish records were written by the priest and he was relying on information from illiterate people at times and they just guessed at spelling hence the name changes. 16 century we got back to on my side of the family, 17 on my husbands.

Gordon Barlow

One has to wonder about the origins of names such as Brothers and Cousins, and why there aren't any Uncles or Nephews. I don't have any answers, although to tell you the truth I've never really looked into what they might conceivably be variants or corruptions of. It wouldn't surprise me if Cousins turned out to be a corruption of something like Colson. There are several English dialects in which the letter 'l' (ell) becomes the letter 'w' (think of how East Londoners pronounce the word "middle" as though it were spelled "Middoo"!), so Colson could become Cow-son pronounced Coh-son, which is very close to how some people say Cousin. We may never know, but it's fun to speculate, if you like this sort of thing...

Gordon Barlow

16th Century is very good, Petal, and 17th too. I'm guessing the first lot (at least) must have been landowners. Which parts of the country were they living at the time? The furthest I ever got back on my own was a couple of families in Herefordshire in the 17th Century. Agricultural labourers who scarcely moved from one little batch of parishes from one generation to the next. (Until, suddenly, one young fellow in the 1800s broke away from the pack and emigrated to Australia.)

Another line of mine was investigated by a distant cousin in the early 1900s who hired professional researchers in a desperate attempt to prove he was descended from gentry in Derbyshire whose line originated back with the Norman invaders. The College of Arms declined to recognise his proposed pedigree based on circumstantial evidence, poor chap, and the link remains broken around the middle of the 16th Century.

Gordon Barlow

Except for landowners, I don't think any permanent surnames survive from the Norman-French invaders/occupiers - unless they were clan-names. I've not seen anything written about the invaders' clan-names, although they must have belonged to clans like everybody else.

BritInParis

Number 2 for me. It's Breton in original so came over with the Normans in 1066.