STOWE
Stowe is an English surname that arises from the Old English word stow, meaning a meeting place or a holy place. The name is therefore toponymic, originally indicating a person who lived near or was connected with such a place.
Place names such as Stow and Stowe occur in several counties, including Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Staffordshire, Cambridgeshire and Herefordshire. The place called Stow in Cambridgeshire is recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Stoua. Another early reference is to Stowe in the county of Cambridgeshire, where a resident named Winobus de Stoue is shown in the Book of Ely in 975, during the reign of King Edward the Martyr.
The surname is one of the earliest in England. It is believed to have derived not only from the idea of a meeting place but also from a building attached to a hermitage, monastery or church. Consequently, the name may have signalled a caretaker or resident of a religious site.
Notable bearers of the name include John Stow of London (1525‑1605), a freeman of the Merchant Taylors Company, chronicler and antiquary. In the nineteenth century, William Henry Stowe (1825‑1855) joined the staff of The Times and served as a correspondent during the Crimean War, where he lost his life from trench fever at Balaclava.
The modern distribution of Stowe remains concentrated in England, with an estimated 4,499 people bearing the name in the United Kingdom. The surname also appears in other parts of the British Isles, and has migrated to countries such as the United States, Australia, Canada and Germany. In the United States, it ranks as the 6,584th most common surname, often found with spelling variants such as Stow, Stoe, Stowes, Stoever and Stover.
Variants and related denominations include names such as Stowesbank, Stoweford, Stowe‑in‑the‑Hole, and Stowey near Bristol. Some double‑barrelled surnames also incorporate Stowe, for example Grocott‑Stowe, Withington‑Stowe and Brown‑Stowe. The coat of arms traditionally associated with the name is that of a green shield charged with a cross ragulee between four leopards faces, all gold.
Typical given names associated with the Stowe surname
Male
- Andrew
- Anthony
- Christopher
- David
- James
- John
- Mark
- Michael
- Paul
- Peter
- Richard
- Thomas
Female
- Amanda
- Anna
- Carol
- Caroline
- Deborah
- Elizabeth
- Jane
- Jean
- Karen
- Margaret
- Mary
- Sarah
- Susan
- Victoria
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 Stowe in...
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There are approximately 1,753 people named Stowe in the UK. That makes it roughly the 4,689th most common surname in Britain. Around 27 in a million people in Britain are named Stowe.
Origin: English
Region of origin: British Isles
Country of origin: England
Religion of origin: Christian
Language of origin: English
Famous people named Stowe
- Harriet Beecher Stowe - American abolitionist and author (1811 to 1896)
- Madeleine Stowe - American actress
- Kenneth Stowe - Civil servant (1927 to 2015)
- William Henry Stowe - Scholar and journalist (1825 to 1855)
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.