Family Surname Origins

Every family story begins somewhere, and I can’t think of a more appropriate place to start than with the origins of my family surnames. The paternal side of my family, the Greenlee’s, originate in Armagh, Ireland and my father’s maternal line, the Twyman’s originate in Scotland.  On my mother’s side, her paternal line, the Murillo’s go back to Spain via Bolivia, as does my mother’s maternal line, the Claros family. A surname goes to the root of our sense of self…it follows us throughout life and often defines our personalities throughout our school years and provides a context for camaraderie with our friendships and relationships.

Throughout my life and my career, I have found that asking six simple questions iteratively defines the root of any issue. These six questions: (1) Who, (2) What, (3) When, (4) Where, (5) Why, and (6) How, all come in handy regardless of whether the issue at hand is personal, professional, or historical. By boiling any topic down to answering these questions, we can understand a person, place or thing completely through the prism of six dimensions. Of course, this only works if you can answer all six questions accurately. With genealogical and family history research, the lack of primary resources leaves much of what we find, up to supposition or to the creative interpretation of facts we do find. With that caveat in mind, one question I hope to answer during my research lies in the origins of my family names. In particular the question of “Why”…why did my ancestors decide to assign their particular surnames to their families?

On conducting a quick search on the internet, I came across the below name origins for the Greenlee, Murillo, Twyman and Claros family surnames.

Greenlee Name Meaning¹: English: habitational name from any of various minor places, for example in Staffordshire, so named from Old English grene ‘green’ + leah ‘woodland clearing’. Similar surnames: Greenlees, Greener, Greenhow, Greenwell, Brownlee, Greenidge.

Further research brought me to the www.greenleehistory.com² website, where the name supposedly originates as follows:

“Our Greenly family name begins life as ‘de Greneleye’ from around 1,000 AD. Our family is based in Staffordshire around an area known as ‘Grindley’ today but in ancient Saxon times the area was known as ‘Greneleye’. Our ancestors who lived in that small area were known as ‘de Greneleyes’ which means ‘of the Greneleye’. People often took their surname from a place near where they lived, or a feature of their appearance or character. This is how people were identified. In those times very few people could read or write, so the easiest way to describe a man who lived near an oak tree was to call him John Oak, or had white hair to be known John White, or John Small or John Long. There is more on the origin of names in The Greenly Story section.”

I imagine how my Greenlee ancestors got their surname went something like this: Greenlee Ancestor interacting with merchant, circa 1000 AD. He goes to a street market merchant and buys a side of beef, asking the merchant to deliver it to his home later.

• Merchant: “And where shall I deliver the beef to?”

• Greenlee: “Oh, I live by that old green woodland clearing nearby. Please deliver it to the hovel there.” (Greenlee ancestor promptly goes on his way to get a pint of ale at nearby tavern)

• Merchant: “Alright then.” (Merchant tells his apprentice to ‘deliver the beef to John de Greneleye’)

Perhaps, in a situation like this and from that point on, maybe, just maybe, the early form of the Greenlee name came to be known amongst the locals…a name that later passed through their progeny in the various bastardized forms. The origins of my other ancestral family surnames, also derive from descriptive physical landmarks or places, so I suspect that their surnames originated from societal interactions akin to the one imagined above.

Murillo Name Meaning³:Spanish: habitational name from any of several places called Murillo, notably in Navarre, Logroño, and Zaragoza provinces, so named from a diminutive of muro ‘wall’. Similar surnames: Morillo, Muriel, Murrillo, Melillo, Trillo, Morello, Cirillo.

Twyman Name Meaning⁴: English (Kent): unexplained; perhaps a metathesized form of Twynam, a habitational name from Twinehame in Sussex or Twinham (now Christchurch) in Hampshire. Similar surnames: Wyman, Todman, Lyman, Tayman, Truman, Wiman, Bayman, Titman, Totman.

Claros Name Meaning⁵: Spanish: possibly topographic name from the plural of Spanish claro ‘clearing (in a forest)’, or variant of Claro. Similar surnames: Claro, Caro, Aros, Clos, Lazos, Claus, Carlos, Laris, Llanos, Carosi.

At this point, I’m merely guessing at the origin of their surname meanings, based on my initial online research. I’ll see how this evolves over time as I discover more about each respective surname.

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References:
1: Ancestry.com – Surname: Greenlee
2: GreenleeHistory.com
3: Ancestry.com – Surname: Murillo
4: Ancestry.com – Surname: Twyman
5: Ancestry.com – Surname: Claros