Origins of the Name Maurice

The surname MAURICE derives from the forename Maurice which was introduced into England by the Normans in the 11th century. As surnames were established about the 13th century, so MAURICE became a family name which spread through England and to Wales, Scotland and Ireland. For reasons that are unclear, in succeeding centuries, the name became far more popular and numerous in Wales than anywhere except London.

The name Maurice derives from the Latin Mauritius meaning "Moorish, dark, swarthy"; and from Maurus meaning "a Moor". While Maurice was the learned form, other variations proliferated, namely Marus, Morice, Morrice, Morys, Moreys, and the most common Morris.

A second wave of MAURICEs entered Britain with the Huguenots who fled the religious persecutions in France. They emigrated to England in two periods, the first after a massacre in 1572, the second after the revocation of religious freedom in 1685. Most of these people settled in London in Spitalfields and Soho, but others settled in Bristol, Southampton, Canterbury and Norwich. By 1700 there were 23 Huguenot churches in London alone, and 12 Huguenot MAURICE baptisms between 1618 and 1737 have found their way into the IGI. The Huguenots were so numerous that it is said that one in four English people today can claim descent from a Huguenot. However, in this case, ancestry may not always be easy to trace, as I suspect that many of the Huguenot MAURICEs changed their name to MORRIS, a common name in the British Isles. France continued to be a source of the name as it spread later to French colonial possessions, especially Quebec. The name spread also to the United States from Canada, England and particularly Wales from where many unemployed coal miners emigrated to Pennsylvania in the 19th century.

The name was more common in Wales than anywhere else in the British Isles, except possibly London, by at least the 18th Century. However, this source of the name is complicated by the fact that the establishment of surnames in Wales came much later than in England and the rest of Europe. The Welsh used a patronymic form of surname, for example Owen ap Maurice, Maurice ap Thomas (ap = son of) etc. This practice continued well into the 19th century in some areas. Even when one family opted to fix the surname, eg Owen ap Maurice becoming Owen MAURICE, later generations sometimes reverted to the patronymic form. However, the surname was fixed earlier for the gentry and nobles, and I have found two families whose use of the surname MAURICE begins as early as the 16th century. These are the descendents of the Knight Politician Sir William MAURICE (1542-1622) of Caernarvonshire who was a friend of King James I; and the descendents of Maurice ap Meredyyd of Denbighshire, whose 15 children were born in the lat 16th century. Early records show many MAURICEs concentrated in these northern counties and spilling over into the English border counties, especially Shropshire. As time went by, more and more were found in southern Wales, and the early civil registration records show that the counties of Glamorgan and Pembrokeshire are by far the biggest source of the name.

Apart from patronymic surnames, other difficulties with researching this name in Wales arise from the fact that once civil registration began in 1837, it was widely disregarded by the Welsh, and it is thought that at least a third of births between 1837 and 1875 were not recorded. This practice can be attributed to rebellion against English authority as well as the fact that many people were unaware of the legal need to register. This failure to follow the rules makes for big gaps in the study of any name in Wales. In addition to the problems with civil registration, by the early 1800's about half of the population of Wales worshipped in independent chapels rather that at the traditional Church of England in Wales. The baptism, marriage and burial records for these chapels, even when they were kept, are not easily available; and the records of the established Church are very patchy, starting later than in England and sometimes missing altogether.

In general, it can be difficult to trace the MAURICE name because in earlier centuries spelling was not as important or standardized as it is today. For example,in the 17th century the MAURICEs of Lloran had their names spelt in a variety of ways, including MORRIS, MORIS, and MORYS, sometimes all in the same document! Well after the time of the Huegenots, there are many cases where we see the MAURICE name disappearing as it becomes MORRIS. Sometimes the reverse happens; and sometimes it switches back and forth. These difficulties would not be so great but for the fact that, independent of the MAURICEs, MORRIS is so common a name as to exclude it from a one name study.