Showering

Recorded in several forms including Sherring, Showering, and Showring, this is an English surname, and one much associated with the county of Somerset in the West Country. Whether it actually originates from Somerset or whether it was a "blow in" from say the village of Sherringham in far away Norfolk, is open to conjecture. It is almost certainly tribal, the name being from the Olde English pre 7th century "Scira-ing" or the Scira people, atribe who appear widely in the few surviving rolls and charters from the ancient period of history known as "The Dark Ages". The people of England after withdrawal of the Roman Legions in 412 a.d., were left to fight their own battles against the invading Anglo-Saxons and later the Norse-Vikings from Germany and Scandanavia. In the following centuries they were pushed back across the country into Wales and the West Country, and it seems more than possible that the Scira tribe were amongst these emigrants. The surname appears in the earliest surviving church registers of Somerset, and examples include: Austice Showeringe, a witness at Bath Abbey, Bath, on March 17th 1604, John Sherring who married Elizabeth Francomb at Martock, on May 1st 1655, and John Sherring and his wife Hannah, who were christening witnesses at Shepton Mallet parish church, on June 20th 1753.