Webb-Bowen

Double-barrelled surnames, usually created following a marriage between two families, have no overall meaning as a unit, but the separate parts have their own meaning and derivation. In this instance, the name Webb is of Anglo-Saxon origin, and is an occupational name for a weaver. The derivation is from the Olde English pre 7th Century "webba", from "wefan", to weave. Job-descriptive surnames originally denoted the actual occupation of the namebearer, and later became hereditary. Early examples of the surname include: Jernagan Webbe (Suffolk, 1221), and Elyas le Webbe (Oxfordshire, 1255). John Webb (1611 - 1672), the renowned architect, supervised the building of Greenwich Palace, 1661 - 1666, and of Burlington House, London, 1664 - 1666. The surname Bowen has two distinct possible origins, the first being a patronymic form of the ancient Celtic personal name Owen, believed to be an adoption of the Latin "Eugenius" meaning "well-born, noble". The form Bowen results from the fusion of the Welsh patronymic prefix "ab" with the personal name. Madocus ap Oweyn (Shropshire, 1292), and John Bowen (Yorkshire, 1305), are among the earliest recorded bearers of the name. The second possible origin is as an Anglicized form of the Old Gaelic (Irish) "O'Buadhachain" meaning "descendant of the victorious one". Thomas Bowen, a famine emigrant to New York, sailed from Liverpool aboard the "Cambridge" on May 8th 1846. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Alger se Webba, which was dated circa 1100, in "The Old English Byname Register", during the reign of King William 11, known as "Rufus", 1087 - 1100. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was known as Poll Tax. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.