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ArchivesMofsey and Millborough
I have been volunteering in an archive office this week and i have had access to lots of records - some of which go back to the 1300s - as you cam imagine i have come across some pretty interesting names :) The two most unusual in my opinion were Mofsey and Millborough - both feminine names from around 1780 in England. I only came across one Mofsey in the records but Millbrough was a very popular name - the parish register of the village i was looking at showed that there was a girl christened Millborough around every two years from about 1750 - 1815. Can anybody shed any light on the origins of these names?
Thanks in advance
Thanks in advance
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Replies
Following my uncle’s recent funeral I learned his Mum’s Christian was called Millborough. The vicar commented on how unusual this was. She would have been born circa 1904.
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Thank you to everyone for your help :)
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Millborough and Milbrey
Millborough is not the name of a town. It is the name of a medieval saint. There were three sisters who were all daughters of King Merewald of Mercia back around 700 A.D. who became abbesses and then were venerated as saints. In Old English their names were Mildthryth, Mildburh, and Mildgyth. In modern English the first one became Mildred. The second became Millborough or Milbrey. Mildgyth was the least famous and her name seems not to have survived to modern times.
Withycombe's The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names says that Milborough "survived in Shropshire until the 18th century." What no one seems to have noticed is that the name, in the form Milbrey or Milbry, has survived on the other side of the Atlantic until the present day. Though rare, there are examples of women named Milbrey in states such as Virginia, Tennessee, and Texas from colonial times until the last decade. I have met one of them personally myself. :)
Millborough is not the name of a town. It is the name of a medieval saint. There were three sisters who were all daughters of King Merewald of Mercia back around 700 A.D. who became abbesses and then were venerated as saints. In Old English their names were Mildthryth, Mildburh, and Mildgyth. In modern English the first one became Mildred. The second became Millborough or Milbrey. Mildgyth was the least famous and her name seems not to have survived to modern times.
Withycombe's The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names says that Milborough "survived in Shropshire until the 18th century." What no one seems to have noticed is that the name, in the form Milbrey or Milbry, has survived on the other side of the Atlantic until the present day. Though rare, there are examples of women named Milbrey in states such as Virginia, Tennessee, and Texas from colonial times until the last decade. I have met one of them personally myself. :)
This message was edited 8/25/2007, 3:37 PM
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If anyone is wondering why there are two different forms, it is the same reason some cites are -bury, and others -borough — these are the derived from the oblique and nominative declensions respectively. Circumstances will dictate which form becomes standard once the declensions fall out of use, e.g. we will frequently hear about the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Canterbury Cathedral, in both these instances, Canterbury will have been in the oblique case, so the -bury form becomes standardized for the city name. An oblique declension becoming the normal form is something that happens generally with the names of women (women's names of this period are recorded far less frequently, and so it is far more likely that an individual will only be recorded in an oblique case).
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Thank you so much for this post from over a decade ago! I’ve always heard a corny family story about where my name came from (my mother, grandmother, 3rd great grandmother and 5th great grandmother were all Milbrey)...from Tennessee. It is most definitely a family name for many of my cousins who also descended from my 5th great grandmother. Happy to learn I’m named after a medieval saint instead!
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I've just done a quick search on multimap.com, and couldn't find a single town or village in the UK called Millborough. Perhaps it could refer to Malborough in Devon, or Millbrook (there's one in Bedfordshire, Southampton, Cornwall, and Meath). Or maybe it's a family surname, if they were all born in the same village?
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I don't know about Mofsey, but Millborough definitley sounds like a place name. People name their kids after places nowadays for no apparent reason. Or I suppose maybe for an apparent one. But perhaps they were doing it then too.
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