Eddy (surname) explained

The surname Eddy is used by descendants of a number of English, Irish and Scottish families.

Etymology

Frank R. Holmes, in his Directory of the Ancestral Heads of New England Families, 1600-1700, proposes two possible origins; the Gaelic Irish: eddee, "instructor", or from the Saxon ed and ea, "backwards" and "water", a whirlpool or eddy, making the surname Eddy a place-name. Another possible origin is the Saxon root ead, "success" or "prosperity". Ead occurs in numerous commonly used names, as Edgar, Edmund, Edward, Edwin, and the outdated Edwy. John Eddy of Taunton spells the name Eddway in the earliest record so far found. Eddy could also be a diminutive of any one of these names.[1]

Robert Ferguson, in his work on English Surnames, believes that Eddy is a place-name: “Eday, Eady, Eddy are from ead, prosperity. Hence the name of the rock Eddiston, on which the celebrated light house is built. From this word are compounded a great number of Anglo-Saxon names of which we have Edward, Edmund, Edgar, Edw Edwin.”[2]

Early history

One of the first mentions that is close to the form of Eddy, is the name of the priest Eddi or Edde, Latinized into Eddius. He went to Northumbria from Canterbury with Bishop Wilfrid (or Wilfrith) in 669, and later took the name Stephanus. He taught the Roman method of chanting, and in 709 he was in the monastery of Ripon, where he wrote a life of Wilfrid in Latin.

In the Domesday Book, the name Eddeu is used in a description of Little Abington, Cambridgeshire, and during the time of Edward the First there were a number of people named Ede, Edde, and Edwy on the tax collection rolls of Worcestershire. There is a record in Hertfordshire, of a William Edy, Gentleman, in 1486. Edie, Eddy, Eddye, Edshune and Edye are found in numerous records in Gloucestershire from 1545 onward. At Woodbridge, Suffolk, Eyde is found as a surname between 1599 and 1610.

Starting from 1570 in the records of many parishes of the Archdeaconry Court of Cornwall, the following surnames are found: Edy, Eady, Eedy, Ede, Edye, Eddey, and Eddy. In Bristol, the town where William Eddye, the Vicar, was born, a number of wills from the late 16th century have the surname of Eddie, Eddye or Eddy. Ade, Adie, Addy, Eadie are common Scottish surnames. These may be forms of the name “Adam”. David Eadie of Moneaght, Scotland, was granted a coat of arms in 1672.

The surname in North America

In North America, the largest family group who bears the Eddy surname are descended from two brothers, John and Samuel, who immigrated to America on October 29, 1630, on a ship called Handmaid. Their father, William Eddye, was the Vicar of the church in Cranbrook, England, from 1586 to 1616 and was born in Bristol in the mid-16th century. Other Northern American "patriarchs" are John Eddy who lived in Taunton, Massachusetts in the late 17th century; John Eddy of Woodbridge, New Jersey, (Scottish) who immigrated in the early 18th century; James Eddy, born in Dublin, Ireland, around 1712, and immigrated in 1753; Thomas Eddy, immigrated in the late 18th century to Fort Ann, New York, from Ireland; brothers William and John Eddy, immigrated from Ireland to New York city in the mid 19th century; and William Dave Eddy, who came to the United States from Cornwall, England, in 1887. There is a currently large family of Eddys in Cornwall.

Notable persons

Further reading

Eddy Family publications

Directories

External links

Notes and References

  1. Book: Holmes. Frank R. (compiled by). Directory of the Ancestral Heads of New England Families, 1620-1700. 1923. American Historical Society. New York. 978-0-80-630182-2. 2008. 938920981. registration.
  2. Book: Ferguson. Robert. English Surnames and Their Place in the Teutonic Family. 1858. George Routledge & Co.. London and New York. 26585162. 323.

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