Gray Name Study

There is an entry in WikiTree for Adam Greenhow Gray: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Gray-20626

He and his second wife, Elizabeth Faraday were the parents of Maria Gray who married my great-grandfather's brother, Barnard Simpson Proctor. Elizabeth was an older sister of the scientist Michael Faraday. Adam Greenhow Gray was probably born in Ireland.

To iterate Lee Carter's note, the Grays in my family and known Gray ancestors all went grey in their early twenties, so I'd venture to say that, in my family's case, it was almost certainly a descriptive surname. As for a French connection, well yes there is, but not in the Gray commune in the Haute-Saône region of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté in eastern France.

For allied families of Grey (or Gray) ... see:

• Space: Grey allied families

Early recordings of the surname include Baldwin Grai, in the Pipe Rolls of Berkshire in 1173, and Henry de Gray, in the Pipe Rolls of Nottinghamshire, dated 1196. Other examples include Henry Gray and Jone Darby married at St. Margaret's, Westminster, on November 30th 1539 and Catherine MacGray, christened at Endell Street lying in hospital, city of London on March 17th 1763. Thomas Gray (1716 - 1771), the poet, was most well known for his "Elegy in a Country Churchyard", published in 1751. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Anschitill Grai. This was dated 1086, in the Domesday Book of Oxfordshire, during the reign of King William 1st, known as "The Conqueror", 1066 - 1087. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was sometimes known as Poll Tax. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.

Read more: http://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/gray#ixzz4Oohifxp7

English: nickname for someone with gray hair or a gray beard, from Old English græg ‘gray’. In Scotland and Ireland it has been used as a translation of various Gaelic surnames derived from riabhach ‘brindled’, ‘gray’ (see Reavey). In North America this name has assimilated names with similar meaning from other European languages. English and Scottish (of Norman origin): habitational name from Graye in Calvados, France, named from the Gallo-Roman personal name Gratus, meaning ‘welcome’, ‘pleasing’ + the locative suffix -acum. French and Swiss French: habitational name from Gray in Haute-Saône and Le Gray in Seine-Maritime, both in France, or from Gray-la-ville in Switzerland, or a regional name from the Swiss canton of Graubünden.

Source: Dictionary of American Family Names ©2013, Oxford University Press

Interesting note here: The Gray men (me, my uncle George, and my grandfather) all started graying in our late twenties and, by forty, both my grandfather and uncle had a full head of white-gray hair. Being almost forty myself, I'm not graying as quickly but still started graying much earlier than statistically normal.