Montgomery (name)

Montgomery (also spelled Montgomerie) is a toponymic surname derived from Saint-Germain-de-Montgommery and Sainte-Foy-de-Montgommery in Normandy, France.[1][2]

The earliest known person to be styled with the name is Roger de Montgomerie, found in a contemporary document as father of the 11th century Norman nobleman, Roger de Montgomery, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury, who owned the village of Montgommery, today in the Calvados département. Alternatively, a Hugh de Montgomery is given as the earl's father by a Norman chronicler writing in the next generation and some have hypothesized an error whereby Hugh is actually father of the elder Roger.

The original family Counts de Montgomerie were prominent in early Anglo-Norman England and gave their name to Montgomeryshire in neighbouring Wales. In some cases, the surname of modern Montgomerys is probably derived from this Welsh place name[3] (the Scottish Montgomerys for example).[4] Seventeen counties in the United States of America as well as districts, neighbourhoods and streets around the world, have been named for people named Montgomery.

In Scotland, the surname has occasionally been gaelicized as Mac Gumaraid, and in Ireland as Mac Iomaire.[1]

Montgomery may refer to:

  1. ^ a b Patrick Hanks, Richard Coates and Peter McClure, eds. The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016, vol. 2
  2. ^ David Dobson. The Scottish Surnames of Colonial America. Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing Co., 2003 p. 108.
  3. ^ Hey, David (2000). Family Names and Family History. Hambledon Continuum. p. 46. ISBN 1-85285-255-0.
  4. ^ Barrow, GWS (1973). The Kingdom of the Scots: Government, Church and Society From the Eleventh to the Fourteenth Century. New York: St. Martin's Press. p. 334.