Origins of the Surname ‘Dunkerley’
.
Note: References, in square brackets, are quoted at the end. You can go to the reference by pressing ‘ctrl+f’ and input the reference you want e.g. [5] then pressing ‘Enter’, and return to your place in the text by simply pressing ‘Enter’ again.
It appears that few Lancashire people of humble origins had surnames before the fifteenth century, but that once surnames were started they spread rapidly, and this is consistent with what others have found about the late adoption of surnames in the North of England[1].
The origin and meaning of the name ‘Dunkerley’ is unclear. It is not mentioned in the specialist books to which I have had access, including the authoritative work by Reaney[2]. Surnames are generally classified as of three main types: occupation (e.g. Butcher), patronyms (e.g. Johnson) and locative, or place-names (e.g. Bolton) which are held to account for considerably more than half of the total[3]. Although no place-name ‘Dunkerley’ is listed in the monumental work by Ekwall[4], it would, nevertheless, appear to be a place name made up of two elements, ‘Dunker’ and ‘ley’. Ekwall is more helpful in explaining ‘ley’; it comes from the Old English ‘leah’, very commonly used in English place names. Addison quotes an old couplet:
‘In ford, in ham, in ley, in ton
The most of English surnames run.’
Ley’s main meaning is ‘
an open place in a wood, a part in a wood with the trees scattered so that grass can grow’, but there are also instances where it can actually refer to a wood itself. In the former sense, ‘
open place in a wood, glade’, it can occur on its own (Leigh, or Lee), but it usually occurs as the second element of a longer name. Often the meaning is clear, such as in Brierley, Oakley, Beverley (clearing where beavers were found) or Staveley (a place where staves were cut), and it is also said to be common in names denoting places of heathen worship, such as Thundersley
[5].
If ‘ley’ is, then, a clearing in a wood, what might be the significance of ‘dunker’? Various possibilities present themselves. Might a ‘dunker’ be one who dunks, possibly in some baptismal rite?
[6] Could it derive from a place called ‘Dunker’?
[7] Might it derive from ‘kers’, meaning cress, or ‘kerr’, meaning low-lying wet land?
[8] Others have suggested that ‘dunker’ could be a corruption of ‘d’Unquer’ – perhaps someone from ‘Unquer’?
[9]A further, intriguing, possibility has come to light. There is a reference to a ‘Dunker Hall’, in Lancashire, in 1747
[10]. Although this post-dates by some time the earliest known references for the Dunkerley surname, it does suggest that ‘Dunker’ may be an English place name, and it may be that the house in question existed well before the date of the reference. Perhaps in the woods of the estate surrounding Dunker Hall there was a clearing where a family lived. When required to adopt a surname in the fifteenth century what could have been more natural than for them to be labelled as of ‘Dunker ley’? Today this locality appears to be called 'Dunkenhalgh' and a modern website remarks that it first appears in recorded history in 1285
[11], so it would certainly be old enough to serve as an origin for the 'Dunker' of 'Dunkerley'.
As there is a surname ‘Dunker’ it is interesting to study its distribution. Internet searches of the IGI
[12] reveal that ‘Donker’ is a surname that exists in England since at least 1606 in Sussex and 1654 in Derby and there is a ‘Dunker’ in 1686 near St. Austell in Cornwall. There are also one or two place names in southwest England incorporating ‘Dunk’, such as Dunkerton and Dunkeswell. By the time of the 1881 census both Dunker and Donker are quite plentiful, almost exclusively in the southeast of England, especially London, with indications that some, at least, were born in Germany. Indeed ‘dunker’ has a Germanic ring to it, and in Dutch ‘donker’ means ‘dark’ or ‘obscure’
[13]; a ‘dark’ or ‘gloomy’ clearing in the woods sounds plausible.
The IGI also reveals that ‘Dunker’ is quite a common surname in certain parts of continental Europe. It occurs in Germany, Norway, Denmark, Switzerland and the Netherlands (i.e. the old Germanic areas) and it is reasonable to suppose that most of the nineteenth century English Dunkers derive from the Continent by migration to London. Perhaps the Dunker of Dunker Hall had a Germanic origin.
Until further facts come to light it seems that the origin of the name Dunkerley will have to remain rather like its Dutch or German meaning, ‘dark’ or ‘obscure’!
We are on firmer ground, however, when we note that ‘Dunkerley’ is a name strongly associated with certain parts of Lancashire. In a search of the IGI from 1545 to 1625 for the surname ‘Dunkerley’, or any sounding like it, a bi-modal distribution is clearly evident. The first element is an essentially tri-syllabic name, basically ‘Dunkerley’ but with some variations, of which the only frequent ones are ‘Donkerley’ and ‘Dunckerley’. These are exclusively located in the Manchester-Oldham area. The second is an essentially bi-syllabic name, basically ‘Dunkley’ or ‘Dunckley’, but with several variations, such as ‘Dunckly’ or Dunkely’. The second group is very strongly concentrated in Northamptonshire but with some distribution in Leicestershire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire. There is no overlap between the groups so we can safely conclude that each represents a distinct geographic area. We do not know if the two name groups once had a common origin prior to the sixteenth century. This distribution was still perfectly clear at the time of the 1881 census, as can be seen by comparing the two figures shown here.
In relation to the name ‘Dunkley’, there
is an entry in Reaney.
[3] It is: ‘
Dunkley, Dunckley, Duncklee: Roger de Dunkeley 1332, Subsidy Rolls, Lancashire; Paul Dunkeley 1642 Protestation Returns for Devon. From Dinckley in Lancashire, Dunkythele 1246’.
In this entry it is interesting to note that among the various spellings shown are both two-syllable and three-syllable (‘Dunkeley’ and ‘Dunkythele’) forms.
‘Dinckley’ is the name of an ancient seat on the bank of the River Ribble north of Blackburn, in Lancashire. As a surname ‘Dinckley’ seems practically nonexistent in the databases to which I have had access, and in the absence of any quoted evidence I would treat with scepticism Reaney's inference that ‘Dunkerley’ or ‘Dunkley’ is ‘from Dinckley in Lancashire’. Further, records from the sixteenth century to the early eighteenth century reveal not a single association of the name ‘Dunkerley’ with Blackburn. Even so, it is not impossible that ‘Dinckley’ gave rise to both ‘Dunkley’ and ‘Dunkerley’. See further discussion at
Geographical Spread of the Early Dunkerleys.
Notes and References
[1]. This statement is attributed by Addison to Leech, but in fact Leech says no such thing; he merely states that in the Preston Guild list of 1459 70% of those taking part had surnames, whereas in 1542 all did. Leech did, however, say that in general up to about 1400 most folk of humble origin (not specifically in Lancashire) had only a Christian name, to which they added a distinguishing label, not generally hereditary. Leech, E.B., 1947, Surnames in Lancashire, Trans. Lancs. and Chesh. Antiq. Soc., vol LVIII, Manchester.Addison, Sir W., 1978, Understanding English Surnames, B. T. Batsford Ltd., London. ISBN 0 7134 0565 1.
[2]. Reaney, P. H.., 1997, A Dictionary of English Surnames, Revised ed., Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-860092-5.
[3]. Addison, op. cit.
[4]. Ekwall E., 1960, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place Names, 4th ed., Oxford Clarendon Press, ISBN 0 19 869103 3.
[5]. Reaney, op. cit.
[6]. A wag at university used to hale me unfailingly with ’Dunk early for Christmas’, a corruption of the slogan ‘Post early for Christmas’!
[7]. There is a place called ‘Dunker’ 100 km west of Stockholm in Sweden.
[8]. This would imply that the name contains three element ‘Dun+ker+ley’. Kerr or Carr is said, by Addison (op. cit. p. 124) to mean ‘low-lying land that remains wet most of the year’. He continues ‘… in the Yorkshire Poll Tax list of 1379 almost every village had someone styled ‘del (of the) Kerr or Carr’ descriptions that would become surnames when these were conferred a century of so later'. ‘Dun+kerr+ley’?
[9]. Rather surprisingly there is a place called ‘Unquer’, on the Spanish coast west of Santander!
[10]. Access to Archives database on the internet. The reference is SND0335/1/1/22 and says: ‘Painley Farm [from Scope and Content] Deeds including: Counterpart lease of messuage called Paithnol or Painley Pastures, late in possession of John Shaw, from Catherine, Lady Stourton, wife of Rt. Hon. Charles Stourton, late called Catherine lady Dowager Petre, heiress of Francis Walmsley of Dunker Hall, Lancashire to Thomas Comealeach of Halton, yeoman, 25 Mar 1747 …’
Written by Philip Dunkerley
This page was last modified on Monday, January 21, 2008