Recorded as Onslow, Onslowe and the dialectal Anslow, this is an English surname. It is locational from a place called Onslow described in Victorian times as being "a place within the liberty of Shrewsbury, in Salop', the original and still confusingly used, name for the county of Shropshire. First recorded as 'Andreslave' in the famous Domesday Book of 1086, and in 1203 in the pipe rolls of the county as Ondeslave, it is claimed that a family called Onslow held the manor as far back as the time of King Richard 1st, otherwise known as 'The Lionheart', who reigned from 1189 to 1199. Locational surnames are those which in some cases were given to the lord of the manor and his descendants which seems to be the case here, or they were 'from' names. That is to say names given to people after they left their original homes to move somewhere else. Local dialects being very thick, and spelling at best indifferent, often lead to the development of 'sounds like' spelling variations. The place name has the exotic meaning of the burial ground of a chief called Andhari. This was a popular Anglo-Saxon name of the pre 7th century, although if it has survived at all to become a modern personal name or surname, it is probably fused with the biblical Andrew of the 11th century.

© Copyright: Name Origin Research 1980 - 2024