The Loveluck Name and Origins
The name Loveluck is certainly a variant of Lovelock which, although
not a very common name, was fairly widespread in Wiltshire and
neighbouring counties - see the Note on the Lovelock Surname for a list of early references to the name. In a note on the historical background of the name Loveluck, Janet Hearle expressed her opinion that John, progenitor of the Glamorgan Lovelucks, changed his name
from
Lovelock to Loveluck, probably when he moved from Wiltshire to
Glamorgan,
S. Wales, and that this change may reflect the Welsh pronunciation of the surname.
John
Dixon is not
convinced
that John L changed his name from Lovelock to Loveluck when he moved to
Glamorgan.
He has proposed an alternative hypothesis, that the Loveluck name
precedes
John
Loveluck
(1739/40-1803),
and cites as evidence a number of earlier parish records for Lovelucks.
However, it should be mentioned that there is another family which definitely has its origins in Wiltshire - the Lyneham Line- which extends into Glamorgan, and for which there appears to be a change
from the
Lovelock
to the Loveluck form even more recently.
Other evidence that the Loveluck form of the name was not the
original
form includes the following:
- It appears that one of the children of Richard
and Anne
Thomas
(née Loveluck)
was baptised Sidney Lovelock Thomas
- Lynne Davis provided me with a copy of a certificate for
the
birth
of Anne David, daughter of Evan David and Elizabeth David formerly
Lovelock
Janet Hearle also suggested (see the notes on The Early Loveluck Family of Glamorgan) that John Lovelock's move from Wiltshire to Glamorgan was associated
with
the fact that the Talbot family had estates in both areas. I have not found in Janet's notes conclusive evidence to
support
this
hypothesis, although it is certainly the case that several Lovelucks
rented
farms and land on the Margam estates and, according to Janet, Margam
Estate
accounts for 1788-9 record that John L. held land in Kenfig and a cot
and
garden in Margam.
A number of people, and in particular Janet Hearle, have attempted to
trace the origins of John Lovelock/Loveluck in Wiltshire (or elsewhere)
but no-one has succeeded so far to establish with certainty where he
came from. Encouraged by Robert Sterry, I enlarged the scope of my
family history research to the Lovelock name, and discovered that there
was a fairly active community of people researching the Lovelock name
in Wiltshire and elsewhere; I have since established a Lovelock Web Site as a focus for this activity.
Although I
have
not
been able to establish with certainty that John Loveluck had his roots
as
John Lovelock in Wiltshire, I have located some likely candidates. In
particular,
the Parish
Register for
Ramsbury
Wilts. includes the following baptism record:
1739 Oct 21, John son of Thomas & Mary Lovelock
as well as a baptism record for the Thomas Lovelock, probably
the
father of this John Lovelock:
1704 July 21 Thomas the son of Thomas Lovelock, Labourer, was baptised same day
However, there are a quite a few John Lovelocks born in Wiltshire and
surrounding counties at about this time, and it is far from easy to
sort out which of them belong to other Lovelock lines, and which are
potential candidates for the progenitor of the Glamorgan Loveluck line.
Robert Sterry has produced a collection of John Lovelocks born about 1740, with some suggestions as to which of them might belong to the different Lovelock trees which have been constructed.
Last modified : 13 Jun 2011