De Lucy

de Lucy or de Luci [1] (alternate spellings: Lucey, Lucie, Luce, Luci) is the surname of an old Norman noble family originating from Lucé in Normandy,[2] one of the great baronial Anglo-Norman families which became rooted in England after the Norman conquest. The first records are about Adrian de Luci (born about 1064 in Lucé, Normandy, France) who went into England after William the Conqueror. The rise of this family might have been due to Henry I of England,[3] although there are no historical proofs that all de Lucys belonged to the same family.

The canting arms of the Anglo-Norman de Luci family display three lucy (luce, or pike, Esox lucius)
  1. ^ Surname de Luci is the most ancient form, later substituted by Lucy (Mark Antony Lower, Patronymica Britannica, 1860, p. 202)
  2. ^ The Norman invaders of England were the first in Western Europe to use surnames. They usually styled themselves after the name of the village that was under family feudal control by use of the french preposition de indicating possession or territorial origin. Lucé in Normandy is derived from Latin or Gaulish personal name Lucius + suffix -(i)acum "place, property", "and is made use of in heraldry to denote a fish called a pike (or jack) full grown" (The Gentleman's Magazine, and Historical Chronicle, London, F. Jefferies, 1822, p. 130).
  3. ^ * Lewis Christopher Loyd, Charles Travis Clay, David Charles Douglas, The Origins of Some Anglo-Norman Families, Genealogical Publishing Com, 1975, p. 55