Earliest known Lloyd family member

Question

i need the earliest lloyd family member

Answer 1

Hello Anonymous

Yours is an intriguing question which begs the question why? None of my business perhaps, but I would imagine an absolutely impossible one to answer.

Lloyd, as the first letter Ll (Welsh alphabet) indicates is a Welsh name. Until quite late in their history the Welsh used the patronymic system of naming so Lloyd would have been linked to the name of his father, and then his sons would link to Lloyds. So if his fther was Madoc for example, he may have been Lloyd ab Madoc, then his son Ieuan would be Ieuan ap Lloyd etc.

In conforming to the English tradition that had adopted a family surname some of these Welsh patronymic names transformed into new surnames with the ap or ab, for instance Ap Rhys became Price, Prys or similar; and some merely adopted one of the family forenames as a family surname, such as Lloyd.

The consequence of this is that there will be many, dozens or even hundreds, of separate families with the name Lloyd which are not in any way linked to each other. Who is to say who the first Lloyd was in any one of these families, let alone which family adopted the surname first!

Comments

Frankly I think it has to be said that when it came to choosing hereditary surnames, the Welsh, being so late, had a unique opportunity to make a really good job of it, and instead, they made a total mess of it.

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I don't know, Jones the post, Jones the baker, Jones the policeman, Jones the undertaker and Jones the builder at least has the utility of knowing their occupations!

Answer 2

Welcome to WikiTree.

If you're working on a Lloyd line, please consider adding your Lloyds to the Lloyd One Name study. You can do this by adding [[Category:Lloyd_Name_Study]] to the biography section for a profile.

The Lloyd name has been extensively researched, so there's a lot to learn about them. You may find some information about early Lloyds in Lineage of the Lloyd and Carpenter family by Charles Perrin Smith. This will be useful as an introduction, as it has compiled information from a number of sources. There may be other references with relevant information, but this book has the advantage of being available in full on Google Books. According to this source, one Ivan Teg of Dolobran, Wales assumed the name Lloyd around 1476. I do not know if all Lloyds descend from this gentleman, but certainly many well-known lines do.