Guild of One-Name Studies
One-name studies, Genealogy
Study: Twyman
Variants: Twiman, Twymer
Category: 3 - A study where research using core genealogical datasets and transcriptions is well under way on a global basis.
Guild hosted website: twyman.one-name.net
Contact: Mr Simon Golding
The Twyman one-name study was started in 2006, and grew partly out of an attempt to trace my own ancestry. My paternal grandmother was born a Twyman, but sadly her father passed away when she was only 7-years-old and they lost contact with her father's family. As such I began to concentrate my research on the Twymans, to see if I could trace her Twyman ancestors for her...and it's grown from there into the one-name study it is now.
The study was registered with the Guild of One-Name Studies in 2012.
The registered variants of the name is Twiman and Twymer.
The incredibly similar surname Twynam appears, mainly in Hampshire, and is derived from the old name for Christchurch.
In many indices the two names are occassionally interchangable, with a number of Twyman entries being recorded as Twynam and vice versa. While I don't consider this variant and haven't actively researched it, I do have record of a number of Twynam families in my files due to this.
According to the 2016 Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland, the surname has a toponymic origin - being derived from the name of a now-lost settlement in the Medway region of Kent, known as Twymere.
The surname mutated from Twymer into it's modern form during the 16th Century, with the second syllable being replaced with -man to create the modern form of the surname.
On the 1901 census for England and Wales, there were 582 Twymans recorded.
According to an ONS database there are, as of February 2012, only 1167 Twymans in England and Wales...making it the 5861st most 'common' surname.
BMD entries from the GRO index for England and Wales have been noted (since 1837), and Scotland (since 1855), together with references from the England and Wales census from 1841 to 1911. All grants of probabte from the calendars for England and Wales between 1858 and 1955 have been recorded, as well as numerous parish register entries for various parishes.
This one-name study also contains data from various other sources (army records, newspapers, etc.), as well as records from overseas (United States, Canada, Australia, amongst others) as well as pedigrees submitted by many Twyman researchers.