English Family History

English Scottish and Welsh: ethnic name from Middle English English Inglish Inglis ‘English’ (Old English Englisc) sometimes alternating with Anglo-Norman French Engleis Engles Anglais Angles (Old French Englois). Compare Inglis and England.

Among the aristocracy and upper gentry it marked out a man of English ancestry from one of Norman or continental origin. In counties bordering England with Scotland and Wales the name distinguished an Englishman from a Scot or a native Welshman on both sides of the border.

The name may also have been acquired by English merchants who traded abroad or who lived and worked in a ‘French’ borough in England (one exclusively administered by Normans).

Irish: in Ireland this name was used to denote an Englishman often being adopted for Irish Aingléis ‘Englishman’ or through mistranslation for Mac an Ghallóglaigh see Gallogly and Golightly.