Where did your name come from?
Names carry stories, and mine — Ferguson and Vernon — open two very different doors into the past. One speaks of Scotland, industry, and migration; the other of Normandy, conquest, and craft. Put together, they’re a reminder that who we are is stitched from countless threads, some close to home, others stretching back a thousand years.
Ferguson — “Son of Fergus”
Ferguson is a Scottish name, and like so many Scottish names, it tells you who your father was. It means “son of Fergus.” Fergus itself comes from the Gaelic Fearghas — fear (man) and gus (vigour, force). So the Fergusons are, in essence, “men of strength.”
My own Fergusons — sometimes styled Stuart Ferguson in older records, perhaps as a gesture of loyalty to the Stuart dynasty — came south from Scotland to Tyneside in the 1850s. That was the heyday of industrial expansion: coal, shipyards, ironworks. Many Scots moved to the northeast in search of work and new beginnings. My ancestors were part of that tide, carrying the old name into a new industrial world. Great Great Grandfather William Ferguson established a thriving builder’s merchants business, which my later father took over in his later 20s and turned into a PLC and global enterprise with interests across the British Isles, South Africa, Hong Kong and North America.
Vernon — From the Alder Groves of Normandy
The name Vernon has a different story. It’s Norman. It comes from the town of Vernon on the River Seine, whose name in turn derives from the alder tree (vern in Gaulish). When William the Conqueror crossed the Channel in 1066, two Vernon brothers — Roger and Ranulf — came with him. For their loyalty they were rewarded with estates, particularly in Cheshire, where the Vernon name took root.
My branch, though, came later and more locally. The Vernons moved from Alnwick down to Newcastle, where they worked as jewellers. For a time they even tried their luck in Sheffield, the great city of cutlery and silver, before settling on the north side of the Tyne. In their hands, a name once tied to Norman lords became linked with craft and trade — metalwork, skill, and the sparkle of jewellery in shopfront glass. It’s a lovely connection that my son is now a successful jewellery maker, the Ouze, has concessions in Liberty’s and Harrods, as well as sales in North America, and imminently in Asia.
But What If We Took Our Names From the Women?
History is written in surnames. In Britain we’ve long inherited them down the male line, but what if things had gone differently? What if we lived in a matriarchy, and it was the mothers’ names that carried forward? Then I might not be Jonathan Vernon Ferguson at all. I might be Jonathan Hogg Wilson.
Wilson — The Smiths of Wigton
The Wilsons were long established in Wigton, a Cumbrian market town with deep roots in agriculture and trade. My ancestors were blacksmiths and wheelwrights — the people who quite literally kept the town moving, forging tools, shoeing horses, and shaping the wheels that carried goods along the old roads.
As industrialisation drew people eastward, my line of Wilsons moved across the Pennines to the Northeast, in search of work and opportunity. My maternal great-grandfather eventually found his place as head groom and later chauffeur for the Murray family at their “big house” in Consett. Horses gave way to motorcars, but the Wilson skill with iron, tools, and craft endured in this new role.
Hogg — From Toys to Trade
On the other side was Hogg. My maternal great-grandmother began as an assistant in a toy shop. From those modest beginnings she built something bigger: first her own toy shop, and then a successful china import/export business. Where the Wilsons worked in iron and wheelwright’s wood, the Hoggs dealt in porcelain and playthings — an entrepreneurial leap into colour, delicacy, and trade.
Two Names, Two Perspectives
If I carried Hogg Wilson as my everyday name, the stories people would assume are different. It conjures up the smoke of the forge and the polish of porcelain, rather than Scottish clans or Norman conquests. Yet it’s the same bloodline, the same family, just told through another set of names.
Where Ferguson and Vernon trace industry, conquest, and craft in the male line, Hogg and Wilson reveal resilience, enterprise, and movement in the female. Both are true. Both belong.
What’s In a Name?
A thousand years of patriarchal naming has hidden half of our inheritance in plain sight. By flipping the lens, I get to see not just the men who shaped my line, but the women whose labour, trade, and decisions carried us forward.
In another version of history, I’d be Hogg Wilson. And maybe that’s a name I should keep in mind, not as an alternative identity, but as a reminder: every name is only half the story.
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