Roy: Those maps of the Pace distribution in the British Isles in 1881 are very interesting. It shows that the Paces and Paceys were highly concentrated in specific areas and seems to pinpoint interesting areas for further research. I noticed that the highest concentration of Paceys was in the counties northwest of London which is among the eastern counties of England. The highest concentration of Paces is just west of there in Shropshire. It is interesting that the ancestors of Gordon Thomas Pace (and therefore John Pace of Middlesex) came from Shropshire, but by the early 1800's had mostly moved to the county just north, Staffordshire. We know that there were many Paces in Staffordshire in the 1880's but they do not show up on the map. We also know that these early Shropshire Paces often used the name Pacey. Gordon W. Pace -----Original Message----- >From: Roy Johnson <royj@webster.edu> >Sent: Feb 9, 2006 11:00 AM >To: PACE-L@rootsweb.com >Subject: [PACE-L] A hypothesis about the surname Pace > >Many years ago a Pace Society member visited York Minister Cathedral in >northern England and brought back a document stating that the Pace surname >was Norman and went back to Pacy sur Eure in France. It has since been >determined that this document was published (or at least got its information >from) an organization called the House of Names, not known for its accuracy. > > > >I recently ran the mapping study of place names at >http://cetl2.geog.ucl.ac.uk/uclnames/Surnames.aspx and got some very >interesting results. > > > >The Pace surname in 1881 was very strong in the eastern counties next to >Wales (and indeed even into central Wales!) and there was a fairly strong >representation up north on the Scottish border, but elsewhere, even around >London, it was weak. > > > >But the surname Pacey was very strong in the western counties where the >Normans mostly settled. > > > >So my hypothesis is that the Pacey surname came from Pacy sur Eure in >Normandy, but the Pace surname probably did not since it was hardly in those >Norman counties at all in 1881. Also, DNA of the western (John of Middlesex) >Paces in our study is very different from the DNA of the Paces that we >believe originated in the London area. (Of course there would be quite a few >Normans in London since it was the capital.) > > > >Of course there were changes in the spellings so that we may have Paces >whose ancestors were Paceys and are of that Norman background. > > > >It is very interesting to go to the mapping URL and put in alternative >spellings of the name, such as Pase, Paise, Paisey, etc. Each variation >seems to be highly localized in small sections of England in the 1881 maps. > > > >Social mobility has caused these names to move around so that the 1997 map >is different, but the 1881 maps would be more valuable for drawing >conclusions about the local origins of the variants of the Pace surname. > > > >Roy Johnson > > > > > > > > > >==== PACE Mailing List ==== >Check out the Pace GenConnect Boards where you can post or peruse Pace Bibles, Obits, Bios, Deeds, Wills, Queries, etc. Bookmark this URL: >http://boards.ancestry.com > ________________________________________ PeoplePC Online A better way to Internet http://www.peoplepc.com