My grandfather, John Henry CUZNER,was b. in Westbury, Wiltshire in 1872. He told us that the family were Huguenots from Alsace, but some cousins in England were told they were Flemish. The name has always intrigued me, and I was sure it was uncommon and easily traced. Wrong! A genleman in Australia has done a lot of work looking at Cuzners in Westbury and Dilton Marsh, where I've traced back to a Simon Cuzner, b. 1805. Just in Westbury and Dilton Marsh there are many spellings of the name, with the earliest birth date as 1657. The spellings include: Cozner, Cosner, Couzener, Cousiner, Cosouner, Cusner, Cuzener..take your choise! Many years ago at the University of Massachusetts library I found a book of French surnames. I copied out the two that seemed the most relevant, with my high school French of 40 years earlier. COUSINAT,-ZINAT (Midi) <<mets>> (Cuisine) en anc. langue d'oc: designe le cusinier qui preparait les mets comme COUSINIER, fome latinisee COUSINERY, En Saintonge. cousinat designe le houx. ( without accent marks) The other name was COUSIN, which for brevity, I won't copy over, but the explanation did include (Dimin:COUSINIET) Now, we need to remember that most of these people probably entered England without any or very much English and that even in this new century there are parts of the UK, where accents are still very broad. I must accept that CUZNER is a corruption of something! On the IGI I found spellings: COZNER, COWSNER,COUZNER, COUZENER, COZNOR, COZINER.etc. The earliest date for the 43 entries is John COSNER, christening, Mar.9, 1569, Donnington, Sussex. Several of the early entries were christenings at Bath Abbey, Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Bath, Somerset. I am opened to any suggestions. Hope I've sparked an idea, all are welcomed. Martha in misty, moisty Amherst Massachusetts __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail � Free email you can access from anywhere! http://mail.yahoo.com/