Top 50 English Family Names & Their Heraldic Crests

Hereditary surnames arrive with the Normans and spread from the top down. Landholders had them by 1200; they were general among the population by about 1400, latest in the north.

The pressure that fixed them was administrative: the Domesday Book, then manorial rolls, tax lists and, above all, the subsidy rolls of the fourteenth century needed a way to tell one John from another. The byname a man was already known by became the name his son inherited.

The largest and most informative group. Many name trades that no longer exist, which is why they need translating.

• Smith — the most common surname in England, Scotland, Wales and the United States. Every settlement needed one, so it was adopted independently thousands of times.
• Taylor — a tailor, from Norman French tailleur, a cutter.
• Wright — a maker or worker in wood. It survives inside Cartwright, Wainwright, Shipwright, Arkwright.
• Turner — worked a lathe.
• Walker — a fuller. Cloth was cleaned and thickened by treading it in a trough, so the man who did it was a walker. Fuller and Tucker are the same trade in different dialects: Walker in the north, Fuller in the east, Tucker in the west.
• Cooper — made barrels.
• Baker and Baxter — a baker, and originally the female form of it.
• Fletcher — made arrows, from French flèche. Bowyer and Bowman made and used the bow.
• Chandler — made candles.
• Thatcher, Tyler, Slater — roofers, in straw, clay tile and stone.
• Clark / Clarke — a clerk, meaning a man in minor orders who could read and write.
• Parker — the keeper of a deer park. Forester and Warren are the same kind of post.
• Ward — a watchman or guard.
• Marshall — originally a horse servant, from Old French; it rose to mean a high officer.
• Carter, Shepherd, Barker (a tanner, who used tree bark), Webster (a weaver), Sawyer, Mason, Miller, Butcher, Cook, Spencer (the dispenser of stores in a great house), Stewart / Stuart (the steward of a household).

• Johnson, Wilson (Will's son), Robinson (Robin's), Thompson (Tom's), Richardson, Harrison (Harry's), Jackson, Watson (Wat, from Walter), Dawson (Daw, from David), Hodgson (Hodge, from Roger), Dickson, Nicholson, Stephenson.
• The -s ending does the same job more quietly, and is characteristic of the Welsh borders and the west: Williams, Davies, Evans, Roberts, Edwards, Jones, Hughes, Griffiths, Phillips.

Those -s names are overwhelmingly Welsh in origin, and their presence high in the English rankings reflects Welsh migration into England rather than English name formation. Our guide to Welsh surnames and heraldry explains why Wales has so few surnames and so many people carrying them.

The most useful group genealogically, because each one points at a map reference.

A locative surname is almost always given to someone who has left: you are called "of Middleton" in the village you moved to, not the one you came from.

• Middleton, Preston (priest's farm), Ashton, Hamilton, Bradley, Barton, Norton, Sutton, Weston, Burton, Kirby, Hastings, Lincoln, Kent.
• Percy, Neville, Mortimer, Beaumont, Grenville — Norman, and named for places in Normandy rather than England.

• Hill, Wood, Brook, Bridges, Ford, Moore (a moor), Marsh, Fields, Shaw (a small wood), Holt (a wood), Bank, Croft.
• Atwood, Attwater, Underhill, Bythesea — the preposition fused on. Nash is "atten ash", at the ash tree; Noakes is "atten oaks".

The most human group, and frequently unflattering.

• Brown, White, Black, Grey, Reed and Read (red-haired), Blunt (blond).
• Long, Short, Little, Broad, Armstrong.
• Young, Elder, Newman — relative, distinguishing a son from a father or a newcomer from the settled.
• King, Bishop, Abbot, Pope — almost never claims. Usually ironic, or from a role played in a mystery play or a village festival, or from service in that household.
• Fox, Bird, Nightingale, Lamb, Bull — from character or appearance.
• Bates, Coward (a cow-herd, not an insult), Wise, Good, Hardy.

This is the part that matters, and the part most "family crest" sites reverse.

Smith is common because every village had a smith — which means Smith was adopted independently by an enormous number of unrelated families across the whole country. Burke's General Armory lists many distinct Smith coats, each attached to a different family in a different county.

So there is no "the Smith coat of arms", and any source offering you one without naming the family and the place is not describing a record. The same is true of Taylor, Brown, Wilson, Jones, Clarke and every other name in the top twenty.

A common surname does not mean there is less to find. It means there is more, and that the work is to establish which line is yours before looking at arms at all.

• Burke's General Armory (1884) — arms by surname, with family and county. Out of copyright and free.
• Papworth's Ordinary of British Armorials — indexed by design rather than by name, for when you have a shield and no attribution.
• The heralds' visitations, county by county, mostly published by the Harleian Society. These tie a coat of arms to a named family, a parish and a date, which is exactly what a "family crest" product does not.
• Parish registers, which begin in 1538 — one of the longest continuous vital records series anywhere.
• The Dictionary of English Surnames (Reaney and Wilson) and the Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland, the standard scholarly references.

For the English heraldic system itself — the College of Arms, cadency, the visitations and how loosely the rules were kept — see our guide to English heraldry.

The Heritage Volume sets out what the historical record holds for a surname — where it comes from, what it meant, where its bearers were concentrated, and the arms associated with it. How Your Report Is Made explains which parts come from public records and which our system builds.

Display the arms in a framed coat of arms, or carry the crest on a signet ring.