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. 

   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 most areas of the UK having no Brettles at all.  Similar results can be found for Brettells.  (See the your-family-history website for the source of the data on Brettle (1) and Brettell (2)

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 see the evidence for this on the map below (3) 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.)

Interestingly these European maps list few Brettles for any European country: 0 for all countries except for 4 for Switzerland, 18 for Germany and 321 for the UK. The German Brettle's are found in southwest Germany, particularly in the states of Baden-Wurttemberg  and Rhineland-Palatinate (4).  Significantly there are no Brettells recorded in Germany whereas Brettell is more common than Brettle in the UK.  Also there are insignificant Brettells in any other European country whereas the outnumber the Brettles in the UK by 421 to 321.  It seems that it is possible that the German Brettle originates from a toponymic origin with the town of Bretten  (5) in Baden Wurttemberg as the Brettles somewhat “cluster” around this area.  The names Brettle and Brettell do not appear in any dictionary of German surnames (6,7) so I conclude that the name must be quite rare in Germany.  The suggested Bretten origin is therefore something of a guess but if true it means that the German Brettles have a different origin from the Brettles in the UK and the rest of the world where they are more likely to be descended from UK immigrants.  This is an assumption that needs to be investigated further (the German Brettles and any American Brettles descendents of German immigrants may well disagree).  It is possible 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.  

Turning to the rest of the world, the family history website Geneanet (8) has the “popularity” of the name by country listed as:

• United Kingdom (3,668)

• Germany (369)

• United States (62)

• Australia (17)

• France (7)

• Belgium (2)

• Canada (1)

• Italy (1)

• Netherlands (1)

• Turkey (1)

“Popularity” of the name means, I assume, 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 Brettle name initially appears by the mid 17th century but later Brettle imigrants are localised in New York and Pennsylvania.  In Australia immigrants arrived later in the 19th century concentrated 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 (8) 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, particularly in the US and other English speaking countries, 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.  With these reservations in mind I believe that the data still gives a reasonable guide to the distribution of the name around the world.

All in all, the localisation of the Brettle name in the Black Country as evidenced here is strong support for the idea that the name originates from the Bredhill geographic location.

References

(1)   https://your-family-history.com/surname/b/brettle/?year=1841#map Brettle Name Origin, Meaning and Family History Your Family History

(2)  https://your-family-history.com/surname/b/brettell/?year=1841#map Brettell Name Origin, Meaning and Family History Your Family History

(3)  https://www.surnamemap.eu/unitedkingdom/index.php?sur=Brettle&s=Search Diffusion of surname BRETTLE Surname Map

(4)  https://www.kartezumnamen.eu/index.php?sur=BRETTELL&s=Suchen Diffusion des Nachnamen BRETTELL Karte zum Namen

(5)  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretten Bretten Wikipedia

(6)  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:German_surnames#B Appendix:German surnames Wiktionary

(7)  https://www.namenforschung.net/en/dfd/dictionary/list-of-all-published-entries/ List : Digital Dictionary of Surnames in Germany DFD

(8)  https://en.geneanet.org/genealogy/brettle/DEU/BRETTLE Brettle Genealogy, Germany Geneanet