Tranah One-Name Study

Tranah
One-Name Study

Topics

About the Tranah One-Name Study
Variants
Origin of the surname
Historical occurrences
Frequency of the name
Data
Contact Details

About the Tranah One-Name Study

Having researched over the years, many of the names associated with my ancestry, I decided in 1999 to look at TRANAH, the surname of my maternal grandmother. As I suspected it was a very small family from a very specific area of the U.K. The name has now travelled around the world and I correspond with TRANAHS in the U.S.A, Canada and Australia. I produce a 6-monthly newsletter 'TRANAH TRAIL,' to update people with my on-going research. The name was registered with the Guild of One-name Studies in 2000.

Variants

The variants registered with the Guild are TRANAH, TRANNAH, TRENAH & TRINAH but the following have been found on old documents TRANAW, TRENAUGH, TURAY, TURNAH, TURNNAH, even FRANAH. But invariably I have found it spelt TRANAH. The family have 2 different pronunciations, to stress either the first or last syllable.

Origin of the surname

A number of suggestions have been put forward by family members as to the origins of the name, which I have looked into.

*Cornish - in looking through the I.G.I. records for Cornwall I can find no TRANAH or TRANNAH at all; in 1842 one TRANARE, 1847 one TRENAH, in 1592 & 1836 TRENNA and one TRENNAILLE. So with our spelling it is certainly not Cornish and with so few with a similar spelling the West Country connection seems unlikely.

*Jewish - the one connection here we can be certain of, were two marriages in the 19thC. The brothers Arthur & Henry, born 1825 & 1829 respectively, sons of Arthur & Mary Freeman TRANAH, married 2 Jewish sisters, Sarah Guy Cotton and Hannah Cotton, whose mother was Jewish of the Levy family in the Medway area of Kent.

*Huguenot - the name is not recognised as being Huguenot by the Huguenot & Walloon Research Association or the Huguenot Society of Great Britain & Ireland and the only name I can find remotely like it in Huguenot records is one Peter TRANO who came to this country from Burgoine near Paris. There is a very strong verbal tradition that the name was French, which may be so even if not of Huguenot descent. The French surname TRENET would very easily be anglicised to TRANAH.

Historical occurrences

Few TRANAHS have risen to great importance but many have been featured in some way on old documents, quite a few through inter-family court cases. This has made the task of researching the family extremely interesting.

Frequency of the name

The first person I have found recorded with the name TRANAH was Arthur, who was listed in 1664 as having to pay hearth tax for 2 hearths in the Strood Little Borough Quarter Sessions Assessment in Kent. And that area is where most of them stayed until the end of the 19thC. To date only 700 have been born with the TRANAH name.

Data

I have indexes for all the recordings of TRANAH in the General Registry Office for England & Wales, I.G.I listings, parish registers, census returns for the U.K. & U.S.A., trade directories, wills, grants of probate, apprentice records, Kent poll boks, victuallers records, immigration records and the research is on-going.

Contact details

For further information, contact:

Mrs Ann Clarke
62 Northwood Drive,
Wadsley Park Village,
Middlewood,
Sheffield
S6 1RY
UNITED KINGDOM
E-mail:

This page last updated 25 February 2008.