CARTWRIGHT
Cartwright is a surname of purely English origin. It is a classic occupational name, deriving from the Middle English compound cart and wright. Whoever first bore the name was, by trade, a maker of wheeled vehicles.
The element cart is a Middle English word that is a later form of the Old English craet, meaning a cart, and possibly influenced by the Old Norse kartr. The suffix wright descends from Old English wyrhta or wryhta, literally a craftsman, itself a derivative of wyrcan, meaning to work or to make. The combination thus denotes a person skilled in the fabrication of carts, an occupation that was vital in medieval England.
The earliest surviving spelling of the name appears in the Subsidy Rolls of Worcesterhowe of 1275. The record shows an individual named John le Cartwereste, who was subject to levies under the reign of King Edward I, known as The Hammer of the Scots. By the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries the name appears in several contemporaneous documents, including Richard the Cartwrytte of Cheshire in 1290 and William le Cartewryght of Yorkshire in about 1300. These entries confirm that the surname was already in use for at least one hundred and twenty years after its initial appearance.
In the early modern period the name continued to be recorded with great regularity. The civil marriage of Henry Cartwright to Alyce Lvnne on 30 May 1579 at St. Giles' Cripplegate in London is documented in parish registers. Later, a man bearing the name settled in the New World; the Virginia household of John Cartwright is listed in a 1623 census of the James City settlement, where he is noted as a resident of the colony.
The coat of arms frequently associated with the Cartwright family is described heraldically as an ermine field bearing a black fesse between three black fireballs in natural colour. Although heraldic customs often varied, this design consistently appears in genealogical manuscripts and armorial rolls belonging to families who adopted the surname during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Typical given names associated with the Cartwright surname
Male
- Andrew
- David
- James
- John
- Michael
- Paul
- Peter
- Richard
- Robert
- Stephen
Female
- Deborah
- Elizabeth
- Emma
- Helen
- Julie
- Karen
- Margaret
- Mary
- Nicola
- Patricia
- Sarah
- Susan
Similar and related surnames
Related and similar names are generated algorithmically based on the spelling, and may not necessarily share an etymology.
How to communicate the surname Cartwright in...
Braille
⠉⠁⠗⠞⠺⠗⠊⠛⠓⠞
Morse
-.-..-.-.-.--.-...--.....-
Semaphore
There are approximately 24,003 people named Cartwright in the UK. That makes it the 345th most common surname in Britain. Around 369 in a million people in Britain are named Cartwright.
Surname type: Occupational name
Origin: English
Region of origin: British Isles
Country of origin: England
Religion of origin: Christian
Language of origin: English
Famous people named Cartwright
- Angela Cartwright - Actress
- Veronica Cartwright - American actor
- Ben Cartwright - Actor
- Nancy Cartwright - American actress
- Ryan Cartwright - Actor
- Mary Cartwright - Mathematician (1900 to 1998)
- Peter Cartwright - South African actor (1935 to 2013)
- Edmund Cartwright - Inventor (1743 to 1823)
- Jim Cartwright - Dramatist
- Tom Cartwright - Test and County cricketer (1935 to 2007)
- Deirdre Cartwright - Musician
- Justin Cartwright - Writer (1945 to 2018)
- Stephen Cartwright - (1947 to 2004)
- Alan Cartwright - Musician
- Fairfax Leighton Cartwright - Diplomat (1857 to 1928)
- John Cartwright - Naval officer and political reformer (1740 to 1824)
- John Cartwright - Football player
- Lee Cartwright - Football player
- Mark Cartwright - Football player and manager
- Sierra Cartwright - Contemporary romance writer
Names and descriptions courtesy of Wikipedia, and may contain errors. This is not intended to be an exhaustive list of every famous person with this name.