J.C. Wilkinson - Forgotten Wolves of Wilkinaland: A New Etymology Hypothesis for the Wilkinson Surname (And Variants) in England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales

Forgotten
Wolves
of Wilkinaland

A New Etymology Hypothesis
for the Wilkinson Surname (and Variants)
in England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales

J.C. (Max) Wilkinson

Copyright 2020 J.C. (Max) Wilkinson.

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ISBN: 978-1-4808-9590-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-9591-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020917496

Archway Publishing rev. date: 10/06/2020

For my chil dren :

Rosemary, Samuel, and Nich olas

That you may know your true name

Contents

Having made their pilgrimage to the island beyond the island, some of those Bronze Age visitors had felt the need to make and leave a permanent mark, perhaps a visible proof of their attendance there. Still without any version of the written word, pictures and symbols were their only option. Central to what they wanted remembered after they had gone were the boats and ships that brought them there, and carried them away again.

Neil Oliver

The Vikings: A New History (2013), 84

(on the Bronze Age rock art of Gotland)

My children are the principal reason I took up this research and have compiled this little book. As a divorced father, one cannot help but feel the disconnect that the severances and gaps in parenting time cause. Life is filled with all the routine things that must be done or are more exciting or more desired to be done. Sitting down to discuss the esoteric origins of family surname etymology in detail is not high on the list of things kids have patience for these days (if they ever did).

So, I took it upon myself to learn all I could about my family name and commit it to writing. I did not think in the process of doing so that I would discover a history largely forgotten, nor further still that substantially rewrites the generally accepted understanding of the Wilkinson, and wilk root variants, surname origin in England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. Nor would I have ever guessed that clues about our family name would be found in obscure passages of Orosius, Alfred the Great, The Domesday Book, and the works of nineteenth century scholars of the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings. But, having seen that is where it all leads, I am pleased that it has.

Hopefully, someday, my sons in particular (though I hope my daughter too will take pride in the surname of her birth), will read and learn about the rightful inheritance of their patrilineal surname. Though that may well be after I am gone. Such a contingency was a factor in my decision to leave this written legacy. Either way, the truth resides in the blood we share and, for my sons, it is literally written in the paternal only Y-DNA I bequeathed them, just as my father gave me, and his to him, and as every father has passed to every son, ever since our species has walked the earth.

For the strength of the pack is the wolf,

And the strength of the wolf is the pack.

Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book

The fetters will burst, and the wolf run free

After the wolf do wild men follow

There hangs a wolf by the western door,

And oer it an eagle hovers

Go forth like a wolf on thy way

A gray wolf had they within their hall

it is well if a howling wolf

Thou hearest under the ash

The word of the race of wolves

Often a wolf in a son there is.

The Poetic Edda, pa ssim

Man m hyle med de ulve man er I bl andt.

(One must howl with the wolves one is among.)

Danish proverb

If you are reading this, and your last name begins with Wilk and you derived your surname from someone of English, Irish, or Scottish descent, you almost certainly have an inaccurate understanding of both the meaning and source of your surname. Whatever your genetic lineage may be, the linguistic taproot of the surname you carry, in my opinion at any rate, is most likely the ancient Slavonic word wilk, which means wolf, and came to the British Isles and Ireland among Frisians and Danes during both the Anglo-Saxon migration and Viking invasion eras. It is essentially a linguistic artifact that remained in use as a given name, long after its meaning was forgotten, from the assimilation of the Polabian Slavic tribe of the Wilte or Wylte/Weleti (or Wilzi) into the Danish and Frisian populations some fifteen hundred years ago.

The purpose of this work is to help you understand the true meaning of your surname, and the convincing evidence of how it came to be so. It is a terrific journey through the history and myth of the last millennium and a half of northern European history. I think youll be glad you came along on this ethnolinguistic voyage.

Presently, this book can be propositional only. Although conjectural, I believe there are valid, indeed compelling, reasons to suppose that the hypothesis I submit here is correct for most or possibly even all of the Wilk root surnames (i.e., Wilkens/Wilkes/Wilkies/Wilkins/Wilkersons/Wilkinsons/McQuilkins/MacUilcins, etc., and variants) whose genealogies trace to somewhere in the British Isles or Ireland, as well as Denmark, the Netherlands, and the region of Mecklenberg-Vorpommern in Germany.

In simplest terms my thesis is this: that the standard explanation that all forms of Wilk/Wilkin beginning surnames being variants of the diminutive for William or son of diminutive for William, and usually with the presumption that this commonly assumed etymology is Norman in origin, is simply not accurate. At the very least this standard etymology, which is seemingly ubiquitous, is woefully incomplete and, arguably, almost totally wrong for the vast majority of Wilk surname lineages.

The Norman origin may account for an exceedingly small subset of Wilkinson lines, particularly those that claim to trace from the family of Robert de Wintona. But even that claimed lineage, I would submit, has problems in its theory of origin for the name itself, which will be discussed below. The late Jean Manco points out:

[F]ew baronial male lines have lasted from Norman times down to the present day. Nearly a third failed to produce male heirs just in the century after the Norman conquest. Barons were expected to fight for the king, and might turn out for war with every able man of their family. Lineages could be lost on the battlefield Norman male lines had shrunk to de Vere, Percy and Talbot by 1600 Subsequent centuries saw more Norman male lineages disappear from the ranks of the aristocracy.