STOW
Stow is an English surname that has long been associated with places of particular significance. Deriving from the Old English stōw – a term meaning “place” or “location” – it has been employed as a topographic marker for individuals who resided close to a noteworthy assembly place, meeting site or holy precinct.
Evidence of the name's earliest use appears in the Book of Ely, where a person referred to as Winobus de Stoue is recorded around 975, during the reign of King Edward the Martyr. Other documentary attestations, such as the Domesday Book entry for Stoua in 1066, confirm the presence of the word in the place‑name lexicon. The surname, in various spellings including Stowe, Stower and Stowers, was later used to denote those dwelling near or working at such sites; for example, a “stower” might have been a steward or keeper of a church or hermitage.
In the close of the sixteenth century, one of the earliest surviving Christian records in the Greater London diocese reaches back to Agnnes Stowers, christened on 23 March 1582 at St Mary at Hill. The name also appears in the mid‑nineteenth century through the journalism of William Henry Stowe (1825–1855), the London Times war correspondent during the Crimean War and the years 1854–56.
While the surname’s origins are undisputedly English, its eventual spread to other English‑speaking nations has been substantial. By the modern era it is regularly found in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, a pattern that can be traced back to waves of 17th‑ and 18th‑century emigration. In the United Kingdom itself, particular concentrations exist in the south of the country, notably in Kent and Devon, and the name remains fairly common throughout England.
Locationally, the surname is tied to numerous places named Stow within the counties of Buckinghamshire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Staffordshire, Cambridgeshire and others. A well‑known example is Stow cum Quy in Cambridgeshire, a settlement whose name incorporates the same Old English element that forms the basis of the surname.
Variants of the surname have arisen naturally over centuries of orthographic change. Apart from the earlier forms, modern spelling differences include Stowe, Stower, Stowers, Stough, Sto, Stoe and pronounced forms such as Stov. The broad family of these spellings reflects the often–fluid nature of English surnames before the standardisation of spelling.
Typical given names associated with the Stow surname
Male
- Andrew
- David
- John
- Jonathan
- Mark
- Michael
- Paul
- Peter
- Philip
- Richard
- Robert
Female
- Barbara
- Elizabeth
- Emma
- Helen
- Hilary
- Janet
- Julie
- Laura
- Linda
- Margaret
- Mary
- 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 Stow in...
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There are approximately 1,964 people named Stow in the UK. That makes it roughly the 4,266th most common surname in Britain. Around 30 in a million people in Britain are named Stow.
Famous people named Stow
- Montague Stow - Cricketer (1847 to 1911)
- Catherine Eliza Somerville Stow - Australian writer, collector of Aboriginal legends (1856 to 1940)
- Augustine Stow - Australian politician (1833 to 1903)
- Randolph Isham Stow - Australian politician and judge (1828 to 1878)
- George William Stow - South African paleontologist (1822 to 1882)
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.