Duke (surname) - History

History

Records indicate nameholders came to England during and in the decades following the Norman Conquest, but its usage became more common in the reign of Richard I and especially in the time of King John. In Queen Elizabeth’s long reign the surname often appeared among the rolls of her ennobled subjects who were prominently mentioned in the annals of her time.

Duke families were also found very early in Ireland. According to O’Hart’s Irish Pedigrees, Vol. II, some were residing in County Westmeath in the Fifteenth century. The will of one William Duke, of Kyllenagh, Kildare, recorded 1551, is found in the records at Dublin. After this early date the family name appears with more or less variation in form, and with increasing frequency upon the pages of the Irish Public Records. Hanna, in his Scotch-Irish Families of Ulster, estimates that there were in 1890 within the province of Ulster 268 persons bearing the name Duke.

Thus the Dukes were one of the ancient families of England and of Ireland. They are among the earliest recorded by Burke in his pedigrees of the nobility and of the landed gentry. The first mention made of them by this authority was the aforementioned Roger le Duc, sheriff of London. The names of Duke and Dukes have been well-established in the Americas, with one of the earliest arrivals to New England being one Captain Edward Duke in 1634. Humphrey Dukes sailed to Barbados with his wife and servants in 1630.