Penver Family History

of uncertain origin. O. J. Padel notes that in Goran parish where the surname first appears there is a coastal feature named Penveor Point (first recorded in about 1870 Ordnance Survey) but this was not inhabited and is unlikely to have given rise to a surname; perhaps the coastal feature was named from the surname.

He points out that many Bretons migrated to Cornwall in the 15th century and tentatively conjectures that Penver could be an anglicized form of the Breton surname Penvern (from any of many minor place-names so named in western Brittany) with English-language shift of stress to the first syllable and subsequent loss of final -n.