Date: [unknown] [unknown]
Location: [unknown]
Surname/tag: Blood, Blud, Bloud

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Contents 1 Introduction 2 The History of the Variants 2.1 Extinct Variants 3 The Variants by Country 3.1 Australia 3.2 Canada 3.3 New Zealand 3.4 South Africa 3.5 United Kingdom 3.5.1 Blood Variants in London, 1321-1650 3.5.2 Blood Variants in Derbyshire, 1431-1650 3.5.3 Blood Variants in Buckinghamshire, 1475-1650 3.5.4 Blood Variants in Nottinghamshire, 1479-1650 3.5.5 Blood Variants in the UK, 1841-1921 3.5.6 Blood Variants in the UK, Feb 2023 3.6 United States 3.7 Worldwide 3.7.1 Blood Variants on LinkedIn, Feb 2023

Introduction

This page was created to act as a clearing house and bulletin board for information related to any variant of Blood besides Blood itself, although Blood will often be included for comparison purposes. While Blood is the dominant variant today, Blod was the original form of the surname. As far as we can tell, Blod, Blode, Blood, Bloode, Bloud, Blud, Blude, Bludd and Bludde are still in use as surnames today, while the variants Blodd, Blodde, Bloodd, Bloudd, Bloudde, and Bloude appear to be extinct.

Author: Garry Michael Blood, 12 Feb 2023

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The History of the Variants

The table below is all known variants of Blood in England, sorted in order by year of first appearance and county. Please note that many records are long lost, therefore some later variants could predate earlier variants and the actual first appearance of any variant might have been in a different county at an earlier date than indicated here. As new evidence is found, the table will be updated Also, given that most medieval and early post-medieval Bloods would have been illiterate, what we're seeing here is how some scrivener, parish clerk, church officer, or court official decided to spell the name they heard when the person said it to them. Please see Origins of the Bloods: Word & Name for a more extensive treatment of the appearance and evolution of the Blood variants through English history.

The 15 Blood Variants in Chronological Order

Note: Blod, the original version, may have occurred as early as 1129 in Warwickshire, but the document in which the name is first recorded can only be dated to somewhere between 1129 and 1307. This means the 1220 record from Kent is the oldest one of which we can be certain.

What this table masks, however, is the overwhelming prevalence of the original spelling, Blod, and its oldest variant, Blode. These two versions dominate throughout the Medieval Period. Note that only 4 out of the 15 variants are documented during the period of Middle English, from 1100 to 1450. The explosion in variants is very much an artifact of Early Modern English as it tried to grapple with the effects of the Great Vowel Shift on the language starting in 1400. Bloode in 1400 is a very early result of this attempt to align spelling with a changing pronunciation.

Extinct Variants

The table below details the last documented year and location of the five variants of Blood now thought to be extinct.

Extinct Variants of Blood

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The Variants by Country

Australia

Future Area of Research

Canada

Future Area of Research

New Zealand

Future Area of Research

South Africa

The only variants that appear in records for South Africa are Blood, Bloud, and Blud.

• Blood: Blood in South Africa dates from at least 1866 and possibly as early as 1844. The given names of some of the 19th century South African Bloods, such as Fitzgerald Neptune, Neptune Fitzgerald, and Bindon, strongly indicate that these were Irish Bloods from one or more of the County Clare lines.
• Bloud: The first record of English-origin Blouds in South Africa is from 1878, and this variant was last recorded in 1981. Note that there were Dutch Blouds (some of which were actually of French origin) in South Africa as early as 1699. Whether of French, Dutch, or English origin, the South African Blouds appear to be extinct.
• Blud: Dates from 1891 and survives today, albeit probably in single digits.

United Kingdom

Blood Variants in London, 1321-1650

The graph below charts out all variants of Blood to appear in London from the first record in 1321 until 1650. As the London records of the Blood presence there start in the period when Middle English was in use, it stands to reason that the word for blood in Middle English, blod, is the dominant form of the surname, appearing 29 times in London records before the language evolved into Early Modern English and the later variants took over.

Blood Variants in Derbyshire, 1431-1650

The below bar graph charts out all variants of Blood to appear in Derbyshire from the first record in 1431 until 1650. Because the Derbyshire Bloods only begin to appear in the written record at the very end of the period of Middle English, the previously dominant Blod spelling of the surname had already begun to give way to the proliferation of variants in Early Modern English.

Blood Variants in Buckinghamshire, 1475-1650

The below bar graph charts out all variants of Blood to appear in Buckinghamshire from the first record in 1475 until 1650. Unlike the records from Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, where the Blood variant came to dominate by 1650, in Buckinghamshire the spelling Bludd was actually the dominant variant to that point. Also, this county was the only place where the variants Blodd and Blodde are recorded. While it looks like a version of Middle English Blod/Blode/Blodde, oddly it didn't appear in Buckinghamshire records for the first time until 1615, meaning it's more likely an Early Modern English variant with an anachronistic but coincidental Middle English spelling. But please note, again, that 'Blodd' was the way one person in 1615 Buckinghamshire decided to write a name he almost certainly heard spoken. For all we know, any other scribe or clerk would have rendered the same sounds as Blud or Blood. Maybe it was just this one guy's interpretation and he was the odd one out.

Blood Variants in Nottinghamshire, 1479-1650

The below bar graph charts out all variants of Blood to appear in Nottinghamshire from the first record in 1479 until 1650. Even moreso than in Derbyshire, the Early Modern English variants of Blood had already taken over in Nottinghamshire at the very beginning of the surviving Blood records there; there are no examples of the Middle English spellings Blod or Blode in the county at all.

Blood Variants in the UK, 1841-1921

The table below tracks all variants of the surname Blood in the UK censuses from 1841 to 1921. Whether the various censuses documented every living Blood or not, the ratios between the various spellings probably reflect reality better than the raw numbers. What is apparent immediately is that by the first half of the 19th century the Blood spelling had become the overwhelmingly dominant variant. The Blood spelling accounted for at least 92% of entries in every decade represented here. These data also indicate that many of the remaining variant spellings were dying out, and by the early part of the 20th century most were effectively extinct -- with Blud being the only one that appeared to have much chance of survival. That being said, some of these variants either experienced a later resurrection, were invisible in the censuses, or survived in pockets outside of the United Kingdom, because a cursory search on Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn shows a small number of people with the names Blode, Bloud, and even Bludd living today.

Blood Variants in UK Censuses from 1841 to 1921

Blood Variants in the UK, Feb 2023

This is a survey of all Blood variants in the UK using three commercial directory services. Obviously there's a problem here in that BritshPhoneBook.com lists no Bloods in the UK, when we know from numerous other sources that Bloods in the UK number in the thousands. The main takeaway of this survey is that the variants Blod, Bloud, Blud, Blude, and Bludd still exist in the UK today in very, very small numbers.

Blood Variants in the UK in Feb 2023

United States

Under Construction

Worldwide

Blood Variants on LinkedIn, Feb 2023

The table below is the result of a 15 Feb 2023 survey of LinkedIn for profiles using one of the variants of Blood, and associated with people either in English-speaking countries or whose information allowed them to be traced back to English-speaking countries. This was done to exclude some names that appear to be variants of English-origin Blood but are actually from other countries and languages (e.g., French Bloud). I chose LinkedIn because it suffers far less from fake profiles, as opposed to Twitter and Facebook. This table is not intended to give a global view of Blood variants across the English-speaking world, especially as most people don't have LinkedIn accounts. What it does do, however, is verify the existence of certain variants in specific countries, although the lack of other variants in the same country should not be taken as evidence they don't exist there.

Blood Variants on LinkedIn in Feb 2023

What is immediately clear is that Blood and Blud are the two most common variants today and are the only two found in both the United Kingdom and all English-speaking former British colonies.