Dowgill

Recorded as Dougill, Dowgall, Dowgell, and Dowgill, this is almost certainly an English locational surname from North Yorkshire. If so it is a local slang fusing of the place name Dallowgill, a "lost" medieval village, and now simply a location, near the city Ripon in North Yorkshire. The Dowgill surname is quite widely recorded in Yorkshire and in the Ripon area with an early example being Richard Dowgill who married Barbary Thompson at Ripon Cathedral on July 17th 1588. However according to the famous International Genealogical Index, Dowgill and its varied spellings, is listed as a member of the Gaelic (Mac) Dougal group even in Yorkshire. Logic would suggest that is almost certainly incorrect. The IGI is a wonderful work but it has a proven habity of listing surnames as a group, when they sound similar, perhaps because they do not have the time to look for any other evidence. It is true that there does not seem to be a place spelt specifically as Dowgill or any of the other associated surname spellings, but Dowgill as a surname is also recorded in the various surviving church registers of the city of London in Elizabethan times. This is a century before Dugall, which itself may be from either Dougal or Dowgill, is first recorded in that city, whilst (Mac) Dougal is much later still, and not found in Yorkshire until 1804. Early examples of recordings include William Dowgill, who married Mary Langley at the church of St Mildred Poultrey on May 23rd 1576, and again at the church of St Mary le Bow on June 30th 1577, when his first daughter Elizabeth was christened