BRAY FAMILIES
Origin of the Bray Name

Where did we come from? Where did the family name BRAY originate? The claimed origin and meaning varies depending on which authority you consult.

The Oxford Dictionary of Surnames gives it as;
Bray: English: Habitational name, (ie named after a place), from places in Berkshire and Devon. The former is probably named from the Old French word ‘bray’ – meaning ‘marsh’, the latter from the Cornish element ‘bré’- meaning ‘hill’.

This book also states that Family names first began to be used from about the 11th century when it became necessary for various reasons to be able to more clearly identify people, slowly becoming adopted by the rich and powerful, with variations until about the 13th to 14th centuries when names had become stable and well established as we know them and everybody had one.

It is often claimed that Bray is a Cornish name and it is still quite common in that county today. Those involved with Cornish Genealogy are confident about Bray being the Cornish word for hill and therefore just as common there as the English name Hill elsewhere. Indeed many, (probably most), Brays in Australia will be able to trace their lineage back to Cornwall or Devon, particularly if yours are from Victoria or South Australia, as quite a large number of Cornish families (including many Brays) migrated to Australia to work in the mines. However, it appears that there are two separate and quite distinct origins for our name, (you can’t get much more opposite than "hill" and "marsh"). So unlike some families, we will not be able to identify a single place of origin that we can definitely say is “ours” and certainly can never claim a single person as the “Father of the Brays”.

A Dr George Redmonds (a family name expert) has claimed a third origin of BRAY which he applied to the very localised group from West Yorkshire centred on Holmfirth and Huddersfield. (see map below). He claimed that it is an occupation name from the old French breyer meaning to crush or grind with a mortar and pestle. The earliest record there is of an Adam Le Bray of Cartworth, part of Holmforth in 1307. However, I am doubtful of this name origin explanation; I feel that this family group would be one of the Norman Brays. Due to the very localised nature of this group I suspect (but naturally cannot prove) that this group of Brays would originate from just one family. Due to the spread of places where these very early BRAY's are found, I feel that these families are the descendents of the "Men of Bray" who marched with William the Conqueror and this would explain the “old French” origin of the name. It may well be that the Devon and even some of the Cornwall families are descendents of the Norman Brays as some Norman knights had castles in Cornwall and Devon from the earliest days after the Conquest.

THE NORMAN BRAYS

The Roll of Battle Abbey, (which is an ancient list, said to be compiled at the time, of those who invaded England from Normandy in 1066), states that men from the region of Bray marched with William the Conqueror, there was no Sir de Bray in the army at that time. However, there would have been some minor gentry and all those who took part in the campaign would have been very well rewarded by William.

Bray is a small village surrounded by farms near Evreux about half way between Paris and Le Havre in Normandy. However, there are some other places in France with Bray in their names near the channel coast so it is not certain which one is meant by the Roll. For example Bray-Sur-Somme has a First World War cemetery and is mentioned in military histories. A search in Google Maps will indicate the location of Bray and the other places.

The early Bray Coat of Arms is described as; Argent (a background of silver), a chevron between three eagles legs sable (black), erased a la cuise (cut off at the thigh), their talons gules (red).

A dictionary of British names gives the first references to Bray as an Alnod de Braio in 1084 in Devon, a Richard de Brai in 1135 in Eynsham in Oxfordshire, then a Ralph de Bray 1225 in Devon followed by a Daniel de Bray in 1297.

A web site, www.tudorplace.com.ar gives the earliest Bray in the noble line of decent as a William de Bray born in 1178, his son Ralph de Bray born 1204, (possibly the one in the Dictionary?), followed by his son, another William born 1230. This web site does not indicate a source for the information or a location for this family so it may be doubtful.

The most famous of the early Brays in this noble line of decent was Sir Reginald Bray, Knight of the Garter who died 5 August 1503 and is buried in the Bray Chapel in Windsor Castle. He was the second son of Sir Richard Bray, one of the Privy Council to Henry VI. Reginald was serving with Lord Stanley in Henry Tudor’s army during the War of the Roses against King Richard III. During the battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, in the midst of the fighting, Richard was killed and Reginald Bray retrieved Richard’s Crown from under a hawthorn bush. He gave it to Lord Stanley who then placed it on Henry’s head declaring him King Henry VII thus becoming the first of the Tudor Kings. During the coronation of Henry, Reginald Bray was made a Knight of the Bath and later became very well rewarded for his service to the King over the years, receiving many high honours. He was regarded as a man of very high abilities; he served in a number of positions and is credited with the design of the St Georges Chapel in Windsor Castle where he is buried.

A knight on the losing side at the Battle of Bosworth Field was a John de la Zouche, Lord of the Manor of Eitone (Eaton). His lands were confiscated and in 1490, the Manor of Eaton was granted to Sir Reginald Bray, the district then becoming known as Eaton Bray. (By co-incidence this is the family name my wife adopted in the hyphenated form when we married, her previous name being Eaton.) As Reginald died without children, his estate passed to his nephew Sir Edmund Bray who in 1530 became the first Baron Bray(e). The male line has died out and three times the title has passed on to a daughter, because of this, the family name first changed to Verney and then to Verney-Cave through marriages. The family home also became Stanford Hall in Lutterworth, Leicestershire in the late 1700s, again through marriage, (see their website http://www.stanfordhall.co.uk/ for details about the house). The manor house of Eaton Bray, (Eitone as it was then), was commenced in 1221 and was demolished around 1794 and only traces of it remain today. The current holder of the title is Lady Penelope, the 8^th Baroness Braye who passed the Hall over to her nephew in 2003.

So then, apparently we are named after a place. Where might that have been? There are several places named BRAY in Europe, the town of Bray in England is in Berkshire on the Thames River near Windsor, Bray in Ireland is on the coast just south of Dublin in county Wicklow and there is a district named Pays de Bray near Rouen and a village of Bray near Paris among others in France.

See www.berkshirehistory.com/villages/bray for information on the English town.
See www.braytowncouncil.ie for the Irish Bray.
See the Wikipedia Bray link page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bray_%28disambiguation%29 for links to information on the French villages. This page also provides links to the Irish and English places.

The Gazetteer of British Place Names identifies the following village or locality names, surprisingly there are only two in Cornwall:
Bray Berkshire
Bray Wick Berkshire
Braywoodside Berkshire
Bray Shop Cornwall
Kelly Bray Cornwall
Bray, High Devon
Bray, Little Devon
Brayford Devon
Braybrooke Northhamptonshire
Braydon Side Wiltshire
Brays Grove Essex
Braystones Cumberland
Brayswick Worcestershire
Braythorn Yorkshire, West Riding
Brayton Yorkshire, West Riding
Braytown Dorset

So, if your Ancestors came from Cornwall, Devon or Ireland where the word has the same meaning, your name probably comes from bré meaning hill (pronounced as bray as in they and anglicised to Bray), you can claim descent from the ancient Cornish People. The oldest Bray family in Australia is descended from a John Bray (1760 – 1797) who was born in Ireland and who arrived in 1790 with the NSW Corps on the Second Fleet.

If your Ancestors came from places other than Cornwall, Devon or Ireland or perhaps they even came from France, you now know that your name probably comes from the Old French word for Marsh and you can now claim Norman (French) ancestry.

Today the name is spread throughout Britain but still very much more common in the southern counties (see map below). The name is also relatively common in France and there are many in Ireland. Of course it is now found around the world due to the waves of migration from the old world to the new.

The Site UCL CASA Surname Profiler shows the distribution of Family names in 1881 and 1998, go to www.spatial-literacy.org/UCLnames/default.aspx to check out the site. However the 1881 BRAY name distribution is shown below. This clearly shows that the name was very prevalent in Cornwall and Devon with some in the other southern counties. Note there is a small hot spot in Yorkshire (see the list of village names with two in Yorkshire and the discussion of the Yorkshire Bray's above).