Brettle and Brettell Name Distribution


Brettle and Brettell Name Distribution

How are Brettles and Brettells distributed around the world?  In the page on Brettle Name Origin much was made of the localisation of the name in the Black Country and therefore the suggestion that its probable origin came from the Bred Hill place name.  To give more background to this, shown here is how the distribution of the Brettle name has varied by English county between 1841 and 1911 from the 10 yearly census:  “no Brettles” is shown in white and the colours vary through yellow, green, orange to red for a maximum occurrence. 

1841

1851

1861

1871

1881

1891

1901

1911

   Date                         County with maximum                       Number of census entries

                                    Number of census entries               

          1841 Worcestershire                                                      15

           1851                             Worcestershire                                                     58

           1861                              Staffordshire                                                         41

           1871                              Staffordshire                                                         41

           1881                              Worcestershire                                                   114

           1891                               Worcestershire                                                     47

           1901                               Worcestershire                                                   118

           1911                                Worcestershire                                                   206

The general pattern is that the county with the maximum number of census entries for Brettle is either Worcestershire followed in second place by Staffordshire or vice versa.  Although the Brettles spread out as time progressed it is clear that they were strongly represented in the Worcestershire and Staffordshire counties in 1841 and this persisted throughout the 1841-1911 time period with many areas of the UK having no Brettles at all.  Similar results can be found for Brettells.  (See the your-family-history.com site for the source of the data on Brettle and Brettell)

Brettle is not only more common in Worcestershire and Staffordshire but is concentrated in a small area of northern Worcestershire and southern Staffordshire i.e. the Black Country.  You can get some feeling for this on the map below where the number of occurrences of the name in census entries for the period 1841 - 1911 are shown in the icons for particular Staffordshire towns.  

(The number of 31 centered on the county town of Stafford is simply a record of the total of the smaller numbers of occurrences for every other town in the county of Staffordshire not having a specific map icon.  You can zoom in and out of the map to get more detail.)


In the present day the name Brettle is still strongly localised in the West Midlands area of the UK.  This can be seen from the adjacent map which was taken from surnamemap.eu which is a project started in Italy in 2015; this has searched over 22 million items in European telephone directories going back to the beginning of the 20th century and so gives a somewhat more up to date view of the occurrence of the Brettle name (at least in telephone directories) in the UK and continental Europe.

Interestingly these European maps list no major records of Brettle for any other European countries except for Germany where there are Brettles particularly in the states of Baden-Wurttemberg  and Rhineland-Palatinate in the southwest of the country (see here for more details).  Significantly there are no Brettells recorded in Germany whereas Brettell is more common in Britain than Brettle.  It seems that it is possible that the German Brettle originates from the town of Bretten in Baden Wurttemberg as the Brettles somewhat “cluster” around this area (see here).  I must admit that this is something of a guess on my part but if it is true it means that the German Brettles have a different origin from many of the Brettles in the UK and by extension in the rest of the world whose Brettles are more likely to have originated as immigrants from the UK.  This is an assumption that needs to be investigated further (the German Brettles may disagree!).  It is possible of course that the German Brettles are connected with the Celtic Breton origin or the de Breteuils of Normandy but the absence of Brettells in Germany make these explanations less likely I think; least likely of all is that they originated from the place name, Bredhill in the West Midlands of the UK.   One final point: some of the Brettles from France appear with an acute accent on the final "e" i.e. Brettlé which may be associated with a de Breteuils origin.

Turning to the rest of the world, the family history website Geneanet has the “popularity” of the name by country listed as:

“Popularity” of the name seems to mean how often it exists in Geneanet’s database which of course includes past generations, whereas surnamemap.eu records current occurrence of the name; however the dominance of the name in the UK is again clear.  The numbers in the United States and Australia can be explained by immigrants from the UK and subsequent descendants as historically this is well documented.  In the US the Brettles are localised in New York and Pennsylvania, and in Australia in New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland, (you can see the more detailed distribution by following the hyperlinks for particular countries in the Geneanet information above).  All of this data needs interpreting with some care of course as “popularity” of the name may reflect the enthusiasm of family history researchers who add to the particular Geneanet database and thereby skew the true distribution with their particular interests; also some of the entries relate to deaths in wartime and do not necessarily relate to the place of birth of the individual.  I know from looking at a range of online family history sites that there are plenty of entries for Brettle in the US but this may be a reflection of the enthusiasm in the US for family history research as a hobby rather than the number of Brettles there.  In spite of this I believe that the data may give an approximate guide to the distribution of the name around the world.