Recorded in several spellings including Ewing, Hewin, Youing, the patronymic Youings, and many others, this is a surname regarded as Anglo-Scottish but truly is from much further south. It was thought to be a patronymic of Ewan, and a developed form of the early Gaelic personal name Eogann, both from Johann itself from the Hewbrew Yochan. However it is now generally acknowledged that this was not so, and in fact the origin is the Latin Eugenius or the Greek Eugenios, both meaning well-born or noble. Other attempts have been made mainly for nationalistic reasons to suggest that the name was originally Celtic and meant "born of the yew", but this seems not to be the case. The personal name was first recorded as Ewen and Ewei in the famous Domesday Book of England in 1086 for the county of Herefordshire. Amongst the sample recordings in Scotland are the marriage of David Eunson and Jean Duncan on May 25th 1758 at Old Machar, Aberdeen, and the christening of James Ewing on June 7th 1743 at Banchory Devenick, Kincardine. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Walter Ywain. This was dated 1202, in the "Pipe Rolls of Warwickshire", during the reign of King John of England, known as "Lackland", 1199 - 1216. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was sometimes 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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