Cumberland, Little Name Study

Location: Cumberland, UK
Surnames/tags: Little, Kennedy, Robson, Beatty, Tweddle, Halliburton, Hetherington Litel, Lytel, Littell

This profile is 'Work in Progress' and a sub-project of the Little One Name Study, and contributes to its goals of trying to understand and link up the various lines of the Little surname using primary documentary sources and DNA testing.

Several lines of descendants of Littles in USA, Canada, Australia and other places can trace their ancestry to either North West England, South West Scotland or North East Ireland.

Cumberland, in England, and Dumfriesshire in Scotland are home to many Littles and have been for hundreds of years since before the Union of Scotland and England and Wales into Great Britain at the start of the 1600s.

By focussing on Cumberland, and the neighbouring Westmorland, we hope to elucidate the elusive cross border connections, in particular, to Dumfriesshire, Scotland.

Stapleton parish, between Carlisle and Bewcastle, seems to have a well established cluster of Littles with proven lines to other parts of England, USA and Australia.

Unfortunately, many parish registers and allied documents have not survived, so establishing links between people is not easy.

There is a project progress page.

The name Little

The earliest references to the name "Little" that I have encountered are:

1. Eadric Litle, 972, Northamptonshire, quoted in "A Dictionary of British Surnames", P H Reaney, Routledge Kegan & Paul, London, 1961 who quotes "Old English Bynames", G Tengvik, Uppsala, 1938.

2. Lefstan Litle, c.1095, Suffolk, in P H Reaney, quoting "Feudal Documents of ... Bury St Edmunds", D C Douglas, London, 1932.

3. Thomas le Lytle, 1296, Sussex, again in P H Reaney, quoting "Subsidy Rolls", Sussex Record Society: 10, 1900.

Reaney gives variant spellings: Little, Littell, Lytle, Lyttle, as well as Litle, all from the Old English lytel for 'little'.

Little & Liddle

Many people think that Liddle is a variant spelling of Little, but others claim that it is different - named after the river Liddel on the English/Scottish border. The authoritative reference that I have found for this is:

4. "The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names", Eilert Ekwall, 4th Ed., 1960, OUP. It states that Liddel is derived from the Old English hlydan-dael meaning valley [dale] of the River Hlyde. Hlyde means noisy or a torrent.

This reference quotes some earliest occurrences:

'Lidel': about 1165, reported in Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society - New Series, Vol xxix;

'Lidel': 1219 in the 'Close Rolls';

'Liddel': 1267 in the 'Charter Rolls' .

Reivers

As it says in the [Diurnal of Remarkable Occurrents]:

“Vpoun the xxvj day of Julij [1529], the kingis grace maid ane raid vpoun the theves, and tuik of thame to the nomber of xxxij perfonis of the greiteft of thame, nameit Armeftrangis, Ellottis, Littillis, Irwenis, with vtheris.“