This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Author: MichaelWright12 Surnames: Classification: queries Message Board URL: http://boards.rootsweb.com/surnames.wright/2263.2988.1.1/mb.ashx Message Board Post: Carolyn, The surname Wright is a linguistic descendant of the original Old English (Anglo-Saxon) noun, wrytha, which was used to describe many different families throughout England, Scotland and Ireland by William the Conqueror's Doomsday census takers in 1086. The Old English noun, wryhta, when used by itself, generally referred to a craftsman builder of watermills and other large wooden structures. A great many of the families throughout the British Isles possessed this watermill building skill and each of them was called a Wryhta family by William's Dooomsday book census takers, creating a situation where there existed after the Doomsday book was finished, many totally unrelated Wryhta families scattered throughout the realm. Along with his assignment of surnames for the Doomsday Book, William and later Kings of England insisted that the family elders pass their assigned surname to each of their sons, thus creating the first true hereditary surnames to ever exist in England. T! hat is to say that the surname Wright did not exist in any form prior to 1000 other than as an Old English descriptive noun used to refer to an the type of work an individual man performed. William The Conqueror was the first English ruler to impose on England the practice of assigning hereditary surnames to the families of all the commoners withing the realm. He brought this new practice with him from Normandy. This was a practice of identifying the people of the realm that had never been used before about 1000 C.E. Even the European nobility prior 1000 tended to change their names to reflect their holdings which tended to change with each succeeding generation, thus changing their names. Assigning surnames to everyone in the realm and making it manditory that the name be passed down to the sons was a new control devise that Kings settled upon so that they could more or less permanently identify the members of the emerging middle class of skilled craftsman type laborers and merchants that had begun to emerge as a significant political force in society. The Old English noun 'wyrhta or wryhta'is derivative from the Old English verb 'wyrcan' meaning to work, or make, particularly to craft something of wood. In Middle English this verb morphed into 'wrycht, wricht' right along with the corresponding surnames, as noted above in the list of earliest records of some form of the Wright surname. Hope that provides you with some in-depth appreciation for where our Wright surname comes from. Mike Wright Outside of the Doomsday Book itself, the earliest English records of a version of this surname include Petere le Writh in Sussex in 1214, a Robert le Wrichte was recorded in Essex in 1255, and a Robert Wricht of Shropshire in 1274 and a Thomas le Wrighte of Derbyshire in 1327. None of these men were related in any way that has been traced, but male lines descended from each possessed a surname of the form,'Wright' by 1550. This is how it came about that in America, we have found through Y-DNA testing that there are over 100 entirely unrelated lines of Wright men. That is men whose most recent common ancestor lived from 2,000 to 10,000 years ago. Important Note: The author of this message may not be subscribed to this list. If you would like to reply to them, please click on the Message Board URL link above and respond on the board.