Back in July, at the start of this current Guild "Blogging Challenge", I wrote:
"Don't let a long gap prevent you from posting something!"
I'm reminding myself about that today because, having not posted anything during October, and seeing the end of November approaching rapidly, it would be very easy to give up and say, "that's it, I've failed the challenge."
But, in an effort to get back on track, this is just a short note, to comment on what I might have written, regarding October's topic of "Similarities or Differences."
One of my ideas for this was to compare the PARRY surname with that of PERRY, since the two spellings are often interchanged - although the names have very different origins and distributions.
Two things prompted this idea. The first was due to me clearing out some old paperwork and finding a letter from a university, which confirmed that I'd successfully completed a period of study with them - but spelt my surname as PERRY. (Fortunately, that mistake didn't have consequences for what I did next!) Then, secondly, the Guild webinar for September was Howard Benbrook giving a talk entitled "Most Surnames come from Somewhere." He illustrated this using the Surname Atlas program that was produced by Steve Archer, and which contains numerical data for all forenames and surnames in the 1881 census of England, Scotland and Wales.1
Surely, I thought, a combination of map images, to illustrate the distributions, combined with some verbal descriptions about the origins of the two surnames, would make an interesting article that fitted the topic?
Of course, having an idea is only the first step - it then needs to be followed by action, putting the information together in order to write the post. And that was when life got in the way!
When I sat down at the computer today, I wasn't actually going to write about this - I'd been planning to start on November's post, and just conveniently 'forget' about October. But I happened to come across an interesting website called "Select Surnames," by Colin Shelley, which provides very similar information about the two surnames, along with some examples of name bearers. You can see his page at Select Surnames.
Since there are no images there, the following shows the distributions derived from Surname Atlas. In the top row, the images show total numbers of PARRYs and PERRYs per county. This is followed by the frequency figures (number of PARRYs and PERRYs per 100,000 people.) As you can see, for the PARRYs, this moves the northern concentration away from Lancashire and Cheshire, back into North Wales, in particular, Anglesey, and the South Wales concentration moves from Glamorgan up into Brecon and Cardiganshire. While the PERRYs do appear strongly along the English side of the border with Wales, adjusting for population indicates their highest concentration is in Somerset.
The lower two rows of images are derived from the same figures (total numbers and then frequency), but displayed per census district.
There are probably several points that could be made from these but, for now, I think it's sufficient to say that, although there is some encroachment of both surnames in opposite directions across the border, the images do illustrate the different distributions of the two surnames, and the fact that PARRY originates in Wales and PERRY in England.
1. Howard Benbrook's talk, https://one-name.org/surnamessomewhere2/
Surname Atlas, by Steve Archer, website http://www.archersoftware.co.uk/satlas01.htm
