Black Family Tree research resources

Explore the detail of the Black Family History using the resources below. We hope you find these sites useful whilst you are researching your Family History !

Did you know that in the 1881 UK census there were 19392 people with the Black surname? In that year Black was ranked number 190 for popularity in the UK.

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"BLACK. "A great difficulty with the Blacknames," says Harrison, "is the impossibility in many cases of deciding whether the etymon is the Old English (Anglo-Saxon) blaec, bloc, "black/ or the Old English (Anglo-Saxon) bide, "bright," 'white,' 'pale.' Normally blaec, bloc, yields "black,' and bide should give blake (or "bloke'); but the forms are inextricably confused, and the present spelling is often no guide to the pronunciation past or present." Blaecca is a well-known Old English (Anglo-Saxon) personal name, and Beda says (H. E., n, 16) that the baptism of Blaecca, prefect of the city of Lincoln, and his whole household was the first fruits of the preaching of Paulinus, A. D. 628. In early Scots Latin charters the name is rendered Niger. Hugh Niger appears as a charter witness in Angus in 1178 (RAA., i, p. 9), and Radulfus niger, deacon of Lothian, was a charter witness in Fife between 1200-1210 (LAC., p. 131; LSC., p. 38). Robertus Niger, burgess of Elgin, witnessed a composition between Simon, bishop of Moray and Freskyn de Moravia, lord of Duffus, in 1248 (REM., p. 114), Adam the Black was one of the jurors on an inquisition held at Lanark in 1303 (Bain, n, 1420), Thomas Blak, a Scots prisoner of war in the Tower of London, was released in 1353 (Bain, m, 1568), another Thomas Blak was tenant of Rahffl in 1376 (RHM., I, p. Iviii), and Laurencius Blac was juror at a court held at "Le Ballocis Hill" near Inverness in 1376-7 (Innes Familie, p. 63). Thomas Blac was a witness in 1463 (Lennox, n, p. 78), and James Blak and William Blake appear as jurors on an inquest in Lanark in 1498 (Lanark, p. 9). The surname was common in St. Andrews and in Prestwick in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and very common in Edinburgh in the seventeenth century. The Clan Lament Society claims that Blacks were originally Lamonts who changed their name. William Black, the novelist, traced his pedigree to a branch of Clan Lamont who were driven from Lamont territory under a leader called the Black Priest. The surname is also used as an Englishing of Madlduy and Macildowie (Gaelic If lUe dhuibh or Mac GOle dhuibh, 'son of the black lad'). In Argyllshire it is a translation of Huie, which itself is a much curtailed form of Mac Gtile dhuibh. Members of the old family of Black of Wateridgemuir, LogieBuchan, have been burgesses of Aberdeen for at least four hundred and fifty years. Blacke 1682, Blaick 1647, Bkyk 1363. See also BLAKE. "_{(The surnames of Scotland. George Fraser Black, 1866-1948)}

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