Although I’ve since found that my Julian ancestors were actually Juliers (posting no. 1349), I’ve amassed so much data on the surname JULIAN in the meantime that I thought I might as well post it here, as it may be of interest to others. Topics covered include variants of the surname Julian, the meaning of the surname Julian, the distribution of the surname Julian in England, and some probable origins for the surname Julian in England.

1. VARIANTS

Variants of the surname JULIAN that I have come across include

i) JULIEN, JULLIEN, JULLIAN, JULYAN, JULLYAN, JULLION and JULIANE

as well as

ii) JULIANS, JULIN, JULINS, JULING, JULINGS, JULLING and JULLINGS

All variants in the first group are pronounced the same and they comprise regional and historical spelling variants of the same name (e.g. the spelling JULYAN was popular in 19th century Cornwall, while the spelling JULLIAN can be found sporadically in 19th century Yorkshire). The second group of variants consists mainly of odd developments ending in [–ng] and genitives ending in [–s]; these forms of the name are rarer, but nonetheless seem also to be rooted in an original form JULIAN.

2. ETYMOLOGICAL ORIGIN

The surname JULIAN derives from the first name Julian, and this name in turn derives from Latin Julianus, which means “of or pertaining to Julius Caesar”. Hence, for example, “the Julian Calendar”, the calendar as established by Caesar, which has in most cases been replaced by the Gregorian calendar due to its now being 7 days off schedule.

The origin of Gaius Julius Caesar’s familial name, however, remains something of a mystery. Many Roman names which are not of Latin origin ultimately derive from the long extinct Etruscan language (e.g. Marcus, from Etruscan Marce, whose original meaning is now unknown). However, because Etruscan lacked a “y” sound (Julius was pronounced “yoo-lee-us” in Latin, and spelled Iulius), this does not seem to be an option.

Many modern investigators (who seem to all quote each other rather than checking original sources) claim that the name Iulius is rooted in an obscure Homeric Greek word ioulos, meaning “downy bearded”. However this seems fairly unlikely, both historically and geographically. A more probable source for the name Iulius would be the widely attested pre-Indo-European root “yul-“, also found in Germanic and Celtic, which designates a solstice or mid-winter pagan festival that Indo-European peoples eventually adopted themselves (the English cognate would be “yule”, as in yule tide, where the solstice sense has been reassigned to Christmas in post-pagan times).

3. DISTRIBUTION OF THE NAME IN ENGLAND

The surname JULIAN and its spelling variants (JULIEN, JULLIEN, JULLIAN, JULYAN, JULLYAN, JULLION, JULIANE) are fairly common in England, and 1,479 individuals had this surname in the 1881 UK Census. Distribution of individuals with a form of the name by county (1881) is detailed below. The first column gives the total number of Julians in the county. The second column means something like “if you were to walk around this county, in 1881, you would run into roughly X number of Julians every 1000 square kilometers”. So this takes into account the fact that, even though there are 162 Julians in Yorkshire and only 7 in Jersey, Yorkshire is 15,000 square kilometers while Jersey is only 116 square kilometers.

COUNTY ……………………. TOTAL ……. DENSITY

1. Middlesex (& London)…… 237 …… 150.09
2. Cornwall ……………………… 504 …… 141.45
3. Jersey …………………………… 7 ……… 60.34
4. Surrey ………………………….. 65 ……. 39.09
5. Nottinghamshire ………….. 47 ……. 21.76
6. Glamorgan ………………….. 42 ……. 20.00
7. Leicestershire …………….. 43 ……. 19.94
8. Northamptonshire ……….. 41 ……. 17.34
9. Lancashire …………………. 41 ……. 13.33
10. Huntingdonshire ……….. 11 ……. 12.06
11. Derbyshire ………………… 29 ……. 11.05
12. Yorkshire …………………. 162 ……. 10.80
13. Devon ………………………. 47 …….. 7.01
14. Kent ………………………….. 24 …….. 6.42
15. Lincolnshire ………………. 42 …….. 6.04
16. Warwickshire ……………. 10 …….. 5.06
17. Flintshire …………………….. 2 …….. 4.57
18. Durham …………………….. 11 …….. 4.11
19. Somerset ………………….. 17 …….. 4.08
20. Berkshire …………………… 5 …….. 3.96
21. Cardiganshire …………….. 7 …….. 3.90
22. Pembrokeshire ………….. 6 …….. 3.77
23. Cambridgeshire ………… 11 …….. 3.25
24. Gloucestershire …………. 10 …….. 3.17
25. Worcestershire …………… 4 …….. 2.30
26. Hampshire …………………. 7 …….. 1.86
27. Suffolk ……………………….. 7 …….. 1.84
28. Norfolk ………………………. 9 …….. 1.68
29. Bedfordshire …………….. 2 …….. 1.62
30. Staffordshire ……………… 4 …….. 1.47
31. Sussex ……………………… 5 …….. 1.32
32. Essex ……………………….. 4 …….. 1.09
33. Northumberland …………. 5 …….. 1.00
34. Dorset ………………………. 2 …….. 0.75
35. Hertfordshire …………….. 1 …….. 0.61
36. Shropshire ……………….. 1 …….. 0.29

The remaining 18 counties of England and Wales, as well as the Isle of Man, had no Julians in the year 1881.

The results of our distribution tally (were it to be represented by graded colours on a map) would show a fairly well-dispersed population with no clear hub. The largest concentrations of Julians occur in three main pockets.

1) THE SOUTHWEST: Cornwall contains an enormous number of Julians (34% of the total 1,479). This concentration appears to transfer east into Devon slightly, and north across the Bristol Channel into Glamorgan and south Wales.

2) THE SOUTHEAST: London also has a high concentration of Julians (16% of the total 1,479), although London will have a high concentration of almost any surname since it contains about a quarter of the British population at any given time. Surrey to the immediate south also has a sizeable Julian population.

3) THE NORTH: While not as concentrated as that of Cornwall or London, the Julian population of the north is a presence to be reckoned with in Yorkshire (almost 11% of the total 1,479) and in other northerly counties like Lancashire and Nottingham.

4. ORIGINS OF THE JULIAN SURNAME IN ENGLAND

Although prevalent and clearly derived from a first name, JULIAN is nowhere near as common in Britain as other patronymic surnames like GEORGE, DAVID, THOMAS and so forth. Some research into historical first names and by-names (proto-last names) revealed that “Julian” was almost never a first name among men in Britain until some time well after surnames were more or less set. This seems to rule out the patronymic (father’s name) as an origin in most cases, and it would also seem to explain the relatively limited currency of the surname when compared to GEORGE, DAVID, THOMAS, etc. Ultimately it seems that the surname JULIAN could have developed in a number of different places, in three principal ways.

a) Matronymic

While “Julian” tended not to be a medieval man’s name in Britain, “Julian” (pronounced something like Julianne) was one of the ten most common women’s names for several centuries during the middle ages. A famous bearer of this name was, of course, Julian of Norwich. In several cases a surname “Julian” would likely have resulted from children taking on their mother’s name as a by-name for official record purposes. One should note that this did not entail bastardy (as some people often assume) – it would only have meant that someone was more easily identified by who their mother was than by who their father was. This could be for any number of reasons, and in many cases it was probably because a person’s father was already deceased. Other examples of matronymic surnames which, unlike JULIAN, are still readily recognizable as women’s names include CHRISTIE and MARGARET.

b) Locative Byname

There were several churches in medieval England dedicated to St. Julian the Hospitaler, and it is also possible that in some cases this is where the surname JULIAN originated. Besides the famous church of St. Julian in Norwich, there appear also to have been small medieval churches dedicated to St. Julian in Cornwall, Shropshire, and Somerset, to name but a few. The French surnames “St.Julien” and “de St. Julien” have a similar origin, and this point brings us to the third potential source for the Julian surname in England.

c) Frenchmen

The name Julian never really went out of style among men in France, and consequently the patronym and its variants are very common there today, albeit usually spelled with an E rather than with an A (e.g. Julien, Jullien). The seventeenth century Huguenot (French Protestant) colony at Sandtoft in Lincolnshire might be the source for some of the northern English Julians, although the by-name JULIAN is attested centuries prior to that in the north. Given their proximity to the continent, the Julians of Cornwall may also have their roots in a French migrant population, though this hypothesis would be better determined by historical and genealogical investigation. The Julians of Jersey and of the other Channel Islands almost certainly had French migrants as their progenitors, however, and the spelling Julien appears there with great regularity.