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Help[Facts] The name "Tweed"
My birth name is Tweed, and I was named after my mother's friend's grandmother who was from Scotland. She passed when I was young, so I never got to ask her how she got her name. I've heard it as a last name, and there is a Tweed Roosevelt, who got his name from a maternal last name, but I am still baffled about how it became a first name unless it was because someone liked the sound of it. I have actually visited the town Tweed in Scotland, which is a border town next to England, separated by the River Tweed. The word Tweed comes from the word Twith which means Between, which made it an appropriate name for the river that separated Scotland and England. The notoriously mean, self-appointed border patrol family were the Tweedies. And then of course there was the corrupt Boss Tweed in New York's early days.
But still, how did it become my first name?
But still, how did it become my first name?
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Replies
From searching the birth indexes (which goes back to 1855) there doesn't appear to have been a single girl born in Scotland with the legal first name "Tweed" since at least 1855. Even as a middle name (it was very common in Scotland for people's middle names to be taken from meaningful surnames) it's incredibly uncommon - though there are about 30/40 instances. But there's also "Tweedie" which is about 10x as common as a middle name, and there have even been 3 girls with Tweedie as a first name:
One was born on New Year's Day 1901 and had the absolutely extraordinary first-middle name combination of "Tweedie Centurion". Her parents must have wanted everyone to know she was born on the first day of the new century! (Tweedie in this case I imagine is an elaboration of twenty)
Fast forward to 1913 and another girl named Tweedie is born. This time, her name comes from her mother's maiden name, which was Tweedie-Stodart. It was relatively common until the early 20th century for minor aristocratic families to preserve surnames this way, by passing it down as a first name to a son (or occassionally - as seen here - a daughter). From records on Ancestry I see that this Tweedie eventually emigrated away from Scotland - perhaps she could be the very person you're looking for information about!
The third Tweedie was born 100 years later - in 2023. With many surnames becoming popular first name, and diminutive names ending in "ie" being common, it's not too surprised to see this name being used again.
One was born on New Year's Day 1901 and had the absolutely extraordinary first-middle name combination of "Tweedie Centurion". Her parents must have wanted everyone to know she was born on the first day of the new century! (Tweedie in this case I imagine is an elaboration of twenty)
Fast forward to 1913 and another girl named Tweedie is born. This time, her name comes from her mother's maiden name, which was Tweedie-Stodart. It was relatively common until the early 20th century for minor aristocratic families to preserve surnames this way, by passing it down as a first name to a son (or occassionally - as seen here - a daughter). From records on Ancestry I see that this Tweedie eventually emigrated away from Scotland - perhaps she could be the very person you're looking for information about!
The third Tweedie was born 100 years later - in 2023. With many surnames becoming popular first name, and diminutive names ending in "ie" being common, it's not too surprised to see this name being used again.
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Suggestions that Tweed means border or was named for being between England and Scotland are anachronistic. Neither England nor Scotland existed when the Tweed was probably named so, and the kingdoms which existed in the Anglo-British era (Bernicia and Northumberland) extended far north of the Tweed, beyond Edinburgh.
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The etymology of the name Tweed is Twith/Twixt, meaning Between. It was a border. It was the river between 2 pieces of land, whether or not these pieces of land were named at the time.
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And whether or not anyone spoke old English as well apparently. Give it up. It was not the border of anything. It ran through the middle of Bernicia , a British kingdom which became Anglicized c.700. There is no satisfactory solution to the origin of the name. It can't be Gaelic as the language of the area was British, then Saxon then Scots English. Everybody keeps repeating it was the historic border between England and Scotland, except it wasn't and isn't except for a short stretch of it's length, at a late period. It was not the border between anything else either.
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It is not unusual in the USA (in fact increasingly popular right now) to use surnames as given names. In the TOP-50 for boys in 2023 you can find Hudson, Jackson, Mason, Wyatt, and Carter; in the girl's TOP-50 are Harper and Madison.
The trend comes probably from American middle names that had a surname earlier and took over to the first names later.
The trend comes probably from American middle names that had a surname earlier and took over to the first names later.
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