Braddon Family History

Date this site was last edited: 30 January 2010

Family names came into common usage in the fourteenth century and indeed we find a William de Braddon recorded in 1330. Where did this surname, that has survived almost seven hundred years and has dispersed all around the world, originate?

Hereditary surnames can be broadly classified in terms of their origin. The groupings are:

Locative where the name indicates that the first bearer lived in or had come from a particular location. A Norman baron would take the name of his estate in Normandy or England; in other cases the name might be of a farm where a family lived or the village from which someone had moved.

Topographical names refer to more general features such as Hill or Green and would show that the family originally lived near this distinguishing feature.

Occupational names refer to the occupation of the first holder, as in Baker or Miller.

Surnames of relationship derive from the original father's Christian name, as in Jackson or Johns.

Descriptive or nicknames also became surnames, as in Armstrong or Long.

Most instances of the name 'Braddon' probably derive from the place name Braddon (Old English for 'broad hill') and thus should be placed in the locative group. It is significant that, even when spelling was not taken so seriously in England, the form Braddon appears consistently. Only rarely do we find 'Bradon' where the context would suggest the 'standard' form. The original Braddons came from, lived on or owned land in or on a location named Braddon.

There are currently three places still known as Braddon in the South West of England: in the parishes of Buckland Brewer and Ashwater in Northwest Devon and the Braddon Hills overlooking Torbay.

The Braddon in Buckland Brewer appeared with this spelling in a deed of 1496. This Braddon certainly is a 'broad hill', almost a plateau on the top and very wide. The modern Ordnance Survey map marks Great Braddon and Middle Braddon as two dwellings; on the ground they appear as Braddon House and Braddons Farm.

Braddon, Buckland Brewer. Devon. (Click to enlarge)

Similarly the Devon Lay Subsidy Rolls of 1330 refer to William de Braddon with his presumed home being Braddon in Ashwater, Devon. Braddon, Braddon Cottages and Braddon Lake still exist north of Ashwater village.

(Both references from 'Place names of Devon Vols. 1 & 2' - English Place Name Society by Gover, Mawer and Stenton pp90 & 128)

There are other similar surviving place-names in England. There is Bradon near Langport in Somerset, Bradon Forest - an ancient forest that once covered much of north Wiltshire known to the Saxons as 'Braedene' or 'Briadun' (Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales pbd. 1875) and Bradden in Northamptonshire. These names derive from the Old English 'brade denu' or 'broad valley' (Concise English Dictionary of English Place-names by Eilert Ekwall 4^th edition 1960). Others are Port Braddon in County Antrim, N Ireland; Kirk Braddan on the Isle of Man: Bradon in south Ayrshire in Scotland and minor place names 'Braddon' in Norfolk and Sussex.

Of course there will have been other broad hills and so possibly other Braddons, whose names have not survived and cannot be found on the modern map.

Strictly speaking, the surname Braden is not a variant of Braddon; the former families' ancestors would have lived in a broad valley and not by a broad hill! However, as you will see on the Variants page, spellings within the same locality did vary between Braddon, Bradon, Bradden and Braden.

Were all the Braddons since then descended from the one family grouping living at a specific Braddon or were they distinct families who lived near the same or different Braddons? Either is possible; almost certainly we shall never find out, although their dispersal in Devon and beyond already by the sixteenth century suggests the latter is more likely.

There is also the Irish surname Braden, with various alternative spellings, which was either taken there by migrants from England and Scotland or is the anglicised form of the Gael O Bradain, meaning a descendant of Bradain, a personal name meaning 'salmon' in English. This surname has mainly been found in Tyrone and Fermanagh. (The Surnames of Ireland by Edward Mac Lysaght pp185-6.)

The origins of specific examples of the surname are best investigated by looking at the locations of its earliest use.