This interesting and curious surname is of Anglo-Saxon origin, and is a regional name for someone from the county of Cornwall, from the Olde English pre 7th Century "cornisc", Cornish, composed of the elements "corn", a metathesized form of "cron, cran", a crane, plus the adjective suffix "-isc". The word "Cornish", to mean a Cornish man, is first recorded in 1547. Not surprisingly, the surname is popular in the adjacent county of Devon, but it is also established as far away as Colchester and Preston. The surname itself first appears in records in the late 13th Century (see below), while other early recordings include John Corneys, mentioned in the Subsidy Rolls of Suffolk in 1327, and Henry Cornysh, recorded in the Pleas of London in 1375. Roger, son of Richard and Elizabeth Cornes was christened on April 16th 1577, at Water's Upton, Shropshire; while Katherine Cornes married Thomas Harper on August 2nd 1590, in London. The Coat of Arms most associated with the family depicts on a black shield, a gold embattled chevron, between three silver roses. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Badekoc Korneys, which was dated 1296, in the "Subsidy Rolls of Sussex", during the reign of King Edward 1, known as "The Hammer or the Scots", 1272 - 1307. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was known as Poll Tax. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.

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