WHAT
IS IN A NAME?
Some Ford family researchers have published claims that
the name FORD derived in England, for someone living next to the crossing of a
river and creek. This
cannot be true! Some
knowledge about language and settlement of people with a little forethought
would prove the name Ford is not just English.
The earliest spelling of the name Ford I have found is
Hylund (Furd) Ford, born 753 in Scotland, married in 783, and died in 843.
He was a Scottish highlander who is listed as an ancestor of the English
King John, who signed the Maga Carta in 1215.
Since that time, there are many ways to spell the name Ford.
For the French Fords, according to American descendants
of Peter Faure (Peter Ford), there is a direct line from the time of
Charlemagne, (Charles the Great, Emperor of the West and king of the Franks.)
who was born 2 April 742, and died 28 January 814.
Charles united the people, and created the French nation.
The French Ford family associated with Charlemagne was his horse tenders
and stable hands.
Some Irish and Spanish Fords claim the name Ford is
Danish. The name Ford is found in early time along the coastlines of Germany,
Denmark, France, Scotland, England, Ireland and Spain.
There is a common thread running along the coastline of these countries
during the 700. Do
you know what it was?
Generally,
English spellings of Ford include: Forde, Fords, Foord, Foard, Fourd, and Atford,
Alford, Elforde and Efforde.
These spellings are also found as Irish and Scottish names.
Early Scottish spellings include Furd, Fuird, Furde, Furide, Fovrd and
before that, Fwrd. Old
English spelled it with "ff" rather than a capital "F" such
as fford.
Several French names were anglicized to Ford from the
names de la Ford, DeFord, Fore, Foore and Faure (first changed to Foure, to
Fourd then to Ford.) Not
all French Ford names were changed in America so that today there are many named
Faure, Fore, Foore and deford.
By the 13th Century in England, the use of first and last
names was widely accepted as a method of identifying individuals.
Before then, people were called "John at the ford" (John Ford)
or "Thomas, son of Jack" for Thomas Jackson, or "James of
Essex," for James Essex, or "William the cooper," for William
Cooper, or "James the smithy" for James Smith, etc.
All this does not, however, explain why so many countries
have people named Ford. There
is an explanation for the name other than for someone in England living next to
a river. The key
is the earliest Scottish spelling of the name, which is FURD.
But, first, we will explore how northern Europe and who populated
England, and how languages developed.
Modern scholarship believes some early people moved
gradually northwest and north from the eastern Mediterranean.
These people populated the areas to the Baltic and then west across
northern Germany, to France, Scandinavia and finally England and Ireland.
These people may have followed the face of the receding ice during the
last ice age. They
spoke a language known as Sanskrit, and old Indic language that became the basis
for Indo-European languages that evolved into nine different languages-one of
which was the Germanic. The Earliest settlers of England were apparently the
Celtics, whose language is founded in the Indo-European, but from a different
root than that of the Germanic.
Later, other people migrated to England whose root language was Germanic.
For English, the Germanic split into three different tongues that are
called north, east and west.
The West Germanic tongue evolved into high and low German.
Old English evolved from low German into middle and then modern English,
which now incorporates some Latin and French words because of the Norman
invasion from France in 1064.
The Saxon race, a fair skinned people, was from the Rhine
Valley with some from the far north of Denmark.
In the 4th Century, the ancient Britons invited the Saxons into England.
The Saxons settled in the southeast cost and moved north and west.
The Angles occupied the eastern coast while the Saxons ruled until the
Normans came. The
Saxons may have had the name Ford.
A common root language could account for the name Ford in several
different counties. But,
it may be more than that.
The Vikings were roving sea pirates of northern Europe
who raided the coast of other countries for almost 200 years, starting in the
700s. Their
language was also rooted in the Germanic.
They raided out of Scandinavia and made major attacks on France.
The armies of Charlemagne were too strong for the Vikings, who withdrew
for a time. Some
Vikings settled on the coasts of Normandy.
They raided the Scottish, English and Irish coasts.
Some settled and inter-married with the local population.
There is a Scandinavian word that sounds like Ford.
The word means an inlet from the sea or crossing to the coast.
The word is "Fiord" or "Fjord."
The name Ford did not arise in England.
The spelling of the name in Scotland in the 700s as FWRD indicates this.
Also the name is found in too many other countries at the same time to
have been originated as an English name.
What is in a name?
You decide for yourself.
Fords usually do.
FOLLETT
My paternal great great great grandmother was Anna Follett. From The Origins of Some Anglo-Norman Families, by Lewis C. Loyd, 1951, we learn the following: "FOLIOT This family seems to have originated in the Cotentin and Western Normandy. Gilbert Foliot 'consilio patrui mei domini Gileberti Lundonensis episcopi' gave the church of Vanuville, Manche, arr. Cherbourg cant. Beaumont, to the abbey of Cerisy. A Sampson Foliot was seigneur of Montfarville near Cherbourg, and gave two houses in Barfleur to Quarr abbey. In England a branch of the family were tenants of the earls of Devon. So far back as the middle of the eleventh century a Rainald Foliot witnessed a charter of Neel de St-Sauveur, viccomte of the Cotentin. It does not of course fellow that there was only one family of the name."
