If anyone has done any proper research, or can support or discredit my "gut feel" then please contact me.
Surnames were (I suspect) originally informal ways of differentiating between people with the same first name living within a given locale.
Identifying people by their trade would be a common approach.
So "John the Butcher" and "John the Fletcher" would be a natural way of describing two "Johns" in the same area.
After time "John the Fletcher" became "John Fletcher" and his son retained the same surname even if he went off to be an abacus programmer.
I can find no evidence to link "Horrocks" with any trade or profession.
Identifying people by their physical characteristics was another way; "John Strong", "John Cruikshank" (crooked leg?) etc.
(That reminds me. John Littleorgan, having joined his local rugby team realised, in the shower, that he was somewhat deficient in certain quarters. He went to his doctor and explained his concerns. The doctor took one look at the relevant area and said "Good grief! Do you have any trouble urinating?"
"No", said our John.
"Hmm", said the doctor, "I should just use it for that then!")
I digress.
The next common origin of surnames appears to be geographically based.
"John from Essex", "John from Bolton" etc. could usefully be applied to identify newcomers to an otherwise tight-knit community.
Alternatively, "John from the Marsh" or "John from the Hill" could identify someone who has always lived locally but simply differentiates him by stating, geographically, where his home is.
So John Essex, John Bolton, John Marsh and John Hill can probably easily surmise how their surname came into being. What about the poor old Horrockses?
I suspect that our Horrocks surname is geographically based.
Somewhere (can anyone help me pin this down?) I seem to recall that "Horrocks" means "a pile of stones". I think the original is either Alglo Saxon or Norse (I did warn you that this wasn't very scientific). "John from the pile of stones" ...... The mind conjours up some poor outcast who can't afford a decent dwelling; eaking out a meagre living whilst spending the night in the shelter of some boulders outside the comfort of the village!! If so, it's lucky that we don't all have the surname "Poorsod"!
Piles of stones must be fairly common across the UK. Why have we, as it would seem, evolved from the Lancashire area?
An old ordnance Survey map (which I'm trying to find in the attic without much luck) showed an area just outside Manchester called Horrocks.
Could it be that this place was named Horrocks because it had a pile of stones as a distinguishing feature? Did one or more people move away from there
so that the receiving villages identified them as "John from Horrocks"? The migration would have to be fairly local. "John from Essex" could move anywhere in the UK and "Essex" would be known to his new neighbours. However if our John moved too far afield from his village(?) of Horrocks, it is unlikely that his new-found friends would have ever heard of the place. He would be known as "John Stranger" or "John Whatwasthatplacecalledagain".
So I surmise that one or more people left the Horrocks village, but stayed in the local area and thus started a dynasty which is still very much concentrated around the original Lancashire area.
Well, it seems to work as a theory. Tell me if you know better.
Graham Horrocks (June 2000)
John Horrocks writes (29 July 2000):
A warm congenial greetings to all Horrocks's.
My name is John Horrocks and I am currently completing a commerce degree majoring in finance at Otago University, Dunedin, New Zealand.
I did some research on the origins of the name Horrocks and came up with the following results:
1. The orrox is a cattle breed, therefore the Horrocks derivation from this has farming origin.
2. The word Horrocks, in a dictionary at the Otago University Library, is an area on the topside of a sailing vessel where the steering equipment is.
Best wishes
John Horrocks
Someone whose name we have lost (sorry!) writes (6 Sept 2000)
My surname book says the name means 'piles of rubbish/stones'. From an Old Norse word pronounced 'hurrock' in the North Country dialect.
Alan Horrocks writes (17 November 2000)
(From the Dictionary of English Surnames, by PH Reaney & RM Wilson)
Horrocks, Horrox, Horrex, Horrix:
John Horroc 1279 RH (Bk);
An. Horrex 1674 HTSf;
ME horrock 'part of a ship', a nickname for a shipwright or a sailor.
[RH = Rotuli Hundredorum, 2 vols, London 1812 1818]
[Bk = Buckinghamshire]
[HTSf = Hearth Tax Returns, Suffolk]
[ME = Middle English]
My thanks to all contributors but especially to Bob and Cath Horrocks (e-mail) who sent (27 Nov 2000) the following long, but very interesting e-mail:
A rather lengthy 'hello' from Bob and Cath Horrocks, now at Potters Bar, Herts, but originating from Manchester.
I recently started to research my family tree but picked up the odd snippet here and there over the years. The 'House of Names' had a stand at an antiques fair a few years ago. They fed the name 'Horrocks' into a computer and out came a page of stuff including specific 'Horrocks' information.
They claim to have researched the Saxon Chronicle (at the British Museum), Domesday Book, Ragman Rolls (1291-1296), the Curia Regis Rolls, the Pipe Rolls, the Hearth Rolls, parish registers, baptismals, tax records, and other ancient documents. This research found that the name Horrocks in Lancashire where they were seated from very ancient times, some say well before the Norman Conquest in 1066. The spelling varied such as Horrock, Horrox, Horrocksford, and Horrex.
According to them, the family name Horrocks is Saxon, a fair skinned people led by the brothers Hengist and Horsa, who settled in England from about the year 400 AD. They settled first on the south east coast, coming from the Rhine valley. (I have a book of ancient maps which shows Saxony as northern France next to Belgium). The Saxons spread north and westward from Kent and during the next 400 years they forced the ancient Britons back into Wales, Cornwall, Cumbria and Scotland. That explains the Celtic origins of people in those areas, the Isle of Man and Ireland.
The Angles held the east coastline, the south folk in Suffolk, the north folk in Norfolk - hence East Anglia I suppose. The Normans invaded England from France defeated the Saxon king Harold in 1066, and drove the Saxons northward. Rebellious Normans (presumably from a previous invasion) and Saxons fled into Scotland. Those Saxons that remained were restive under the Norman rule, and many moved northwards to the midlands, Lancashire and Yorkshire where Norman influence was less. No motorways in those days!
The name Horrocks emerged as a notable English family name in Lancashire, recorded as a family of great antiquity seated with manors and estates in the county. Robert Horrocks was lord of the manor of Horrocksford Hall in the parish of Clitheroe, Lancashire. If you look on a map, you will still find a village of Horrocksford just north of Clitheroe but I have not been there yet. They later became established at Preston and Larkshill. The name was early associated with the famous Lancashire cotton trade.
The name flourished in the 16 - 18th centuries, a period of religious conflict, and families were 'encouraged' to migrate to Ireland and the colonies. Members of the family moved to North America aboard the armada of small ships known as the 'White sails', crossing the Atlantic. Amongst the first migrants to North America was Thomas Horrocks who settled in Virginia in 1635. George, Jeremiah Horrock (without an 's' at the end, but spelling was not consistent in those days as Shakespeare proved) and George, Henry, John, Thomas, Willoughby, Wright Horrocks arrived at Philadelphia between 1820 and 1860.
During the American War of Independence, many loyalists went north to Canada about 1790, and became known as the United Empire Loyalists. They were granted equivalent lands along the banks of the St Lawrence River and the Niagara Peninsula. Contemporary notables included General Sir Gwynne Horrocks, British Army.
Different branches of the family were awarded coats of arms. The most ancient Coat of Arms found was:
Gold with a blue trellised design with a blue stripe at the top and a bee between two shuttles. The Crest was an eagle on a rock holding a shield on which there is a hank of cotton. The Motto was 'Spe'. (not translated so I do not know what it means)
That is a summary of what the 'House of Names' said on their printout. That Coat of Arms is consistent with the cotton trade (the hank of cotton and shuttles), and the bee and blue trellised stripe is (I think) part of the City of Manchester Coat of Arms. The 'rock' may be what I have learned from your website - the name meaning a pile of stones. My wife and I reckon we come from nobodies and the stones might imply just that. Therefore, this Coat of Arms apparently links the family name with both Manchester and the cotton trade.
Deborah Horrocks writes (8 May 2002):
Hi,
I have a name printout on the history of Horrocks surname and it states contrary to the popular misconception of dweller near a pile of stones - it actually comes from the term - Hoar oackes - essentially ancient oak or dweller in ancient oak.
Makes more sense you would be living in a home of ancient oak rather than "a pile of stones".
Food for thought,
Deborah Horrocks
Harold J Horrocks writes (30 January 2003):
Can't give you any proof, but my father, Alfred Samuel Horrocks, always told me that the name originated as a locality. The family or group lived by some large Hoar Oak trees. Thus it came to known as John from Hoar Oaks -- later to be shortened to John Hoaroaks -- later to John Horrocks or Horrox or Horrock or Orrocks, or Orox etc. My English grandmother always called me Arold Orrocks. So who knows. Take it with a grain of salt.
Ivan Horrocks writes (2 July 2002):
Hello the Portishead Horrocks's
I stumbled on your site today. Very interesting and professional. I haven't finished looking around the whole site - will return to that shortly. However, I thought I'd add my two penny worth to your 'origin of name' debate.
Although my family are originally from Essex (father and grandfather) I believe my great grandfather moved there from Lancashire (although having read Bob Horrocks long email it may well be that my ancestors got left behind when most other Horrocks moved north West). Coincidentally I spent two years living in Manchester in the early 1990s and can vouch for the fact that there are certainly more Horrocks's there than anywhere else. You are also right that there is an area of Manchester with the name. I had an old street map which clearly showed an area of the city, slightly to the north of the city centre, as 'Great Horrocks'. I think I still have the map.
I was also told by my father (who heard it from his father and so on) of another source for the origin of the name. It's not far removed from your own suggestion concerning a pile of rocks and is, in fact to do with quarrying. Horrocks is a bastardisation of 'hewer of rocks' (i.e. a quarryman). I would assume that this is the original Saxon interpretation which would follow, because as Saxon use of the name (as Bob Horrocks points out) predates both the development of cotton industry and the development of shipping to the point at which there were generic names for equipment then the name cannot originate from those sources. What is most likely is that association with those artefacts came later as the Horrocks's became associated with emerging trades and occupations (as wit the cotton industry in Lancashire).
Anyway, enough from me.
Regards
Ivan