Damerell Name Study

Profile managers: One Name Studies WikiTree [send private message] and Lori Guess [send private message]

This is a One Name Study to collect together in one place everything about the Damerell/Damerall/Damarell/Damriel surname, beginning in Devon, England. The hope is that other researchers like you will join our study to help make it a valuable reference point for people studying lines that cross or intersect. Please contact the project, add categories to your profiles, add your questions to the bulletin board, add details of your name research, etc.

Goals

• To connect the 19th century Damerells to the William-the-Conqueror era namebearers via variants and deviants
• To trace the origins of the name and follow its migration

Origin of the Name

This most interesting surname is of Old French origin, and is a locational name from Aumale in Seine-Inferieure, France, which was earlier recorded as "Alba Margila", white border, boundary. The surname itself contains the French preposition "de", of a place, which has become fused with the actual placename to form the surname. The fuller form is preserved in the title of the Duke of Albermarle. In England the place Hinton Admiral in Hampshire preserves the surname without the preposition, and was held by Reginald de Albamara in 1242 and by William de Fortibus, Count of Aumale in the 12th Century. Admiral itself is due to popular folk etymology.

The surname is one of the earliest on record, as it first appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 (see below). Variants of the surname in the modern idiom are Damerell, Damiral, Dammarell, Damrel, and Damrell. Other early examples include Robert de Albermarle in the Domesday Book of Devonshire in 1086 ^[1]; Reginald de Aumarle in the Assize Court Rolls of Somerset in 1243; and Thomas Damarell in the Subsidy Rolls of Suffolk in 1568. A Coat of Arms, depicting three gold crescents on a red shield, was granted during the reign of Edward II (1307 - 1327) to a Damarell family in Devonshire. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Robert de Alba Marula, which was dated 1086, in the Domesday Book of Devonshire, during the reign of King William I, known as "The Conqueror", 1066 - 1086.

Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was 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/Damerell#ixzz4dMgjKT00

Migration

Damerell Settlers in the US:

• Edmund Damerell ==>Michigan 1854
• John C Damerell ==>Illinois 1856
• Emmanuel Damerell ==>Illinois 1856

I have even found a Damarelos family from Greece, naturalising in the US!

See Damerells in the 1881 UK census

Notable Namebearers

• Dr Robert Damerell, (1850-1927), US physician
• Stanley Damerell (1879-1951), lyricist and King Rat (Grand Order of Water Rats)

Resources

• List of Damerell individuals on Wikitree
• G2G feed of questions tagged "Damerell".
• Orphaned Damerell profiles on WikiTree.
• Unsourced Damerell profiles on WikiTree.
• Unconnected Damerell profiles on WikiTree.
• British Surnames: Damerell

Sources

1. ↑ Robert of Aumale/d'Amarell/Damarell/de Albemarle/de Albamara on Wikipedia

Research Notes

Space:Damerell_Notes - initial brainstorms for the name