Brunger

Recorded as Bronger, Brunger, Brungor, Brunker, Brounker and others, this is an English medieval surname. It is however of much earlier Anglo-Saxon and Germanic origins in the centuries long before the advent of surnames as we know them today. Then it was Brungar, a personal name of the pre 7th Century which translates as "brown-spear", and apparently a very popular personal name in England prior to the famous Norman Conquest of England in the year 1066. This personal name is recorded in its Latinized form of Brungarus in the Domesday Book of Suffolk in 1086, and it is in that county we find the surname developement. These recordings include Robert Brungor of Suffolk in the Pipe Rolls of the year 1310, and William Brunker in the same Pipe Rolls but for 1311. We are unable to say whether this was just poor spelling, and that they were in fact related, but either is possible. Amongst the early surviving recordings in the city of London church registers are the marriage of Francis Brunger and Mary Heath on February 26th 1627 at St. Dunstan Stepney, and the christening of Marie, the daughter of John and Mary Bronger on May 29th 1636 at St. Botolph's Bishopsgate. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Thomas Brunger. This was dated 1275, in the Hundred Rolls of landowners of the county of Norfolk, during the reign of King Edward 1st of England. He was known to history as "The Hammer of the Scots", 1272 - 1307. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was sometimes known as the Poll Tax. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.