My Family Genealogy

What does the Clark name mean? 1. English: occupational name for a scribe or secretary, originally a member of a minor religious order who undertook such duties. The word clerc denoted a member of a religious order, from Old English cler(e)c ‘priest’, reinforced by Old French clerc. Both are from Late Latin clericus, from Greek klerikos, a derivative of kleros ‘inheritance’, ‘legacy’, with reference to the priestly tribe of Levites (see Levy) ‘whose inheritance was the Lord’. In medieval Christian Europe, clergy in minor orders were permitted to marry and so found families; thus the surname could become established. In the Middle Ages it was virtually only members of religious orders who learned to read and write, so that the term clerk came to denote any literate man. Surname Origin: English Alternate Surname Spellings: CLARKE, CLERK, CLERKE What does the Orchard name mean? 1. English: topographic name for someone who lived by an orchard, or a metonymic occupational name for a fruit grower, from Middle English orchard. 2. English: habitational name from any of the places called Orchard. Those in Devon and Somerset are named from Old English ortgeard, orceard (a compound of wort, wyrt ‘plant’ (later associated with Latin hortus ‘garden’) + geard ‘yard’, ‘enclosure’), while East and West Orchard near Shaftesbury in Dorset have a different origin, ‘(place) beside the wood’, from Celtic ar + ced. 3. Scottish: English surname adopted as equivalent of Urquhart. What does the Coleman name mean? 1) An occupational name, a coleman was a man who gathered charcoal (from Old English "col," coal and "mann," man) or, sometimes, a name for the personal servant of a man named Cole. 2) A patronymic name from the Old Irish given name Colman, from Columbun (from Latin columba, meaning "dove"). Surname Origin: English, Scottish Alternate Surname Spellings: COLMAN

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