Is Walker a Scottish Name? Is Walker an Irish Name? Is Walker an English Name? What does the name Walker mean?
Where In The World Are Walker’s From?
There are Walker’s all around the world, and many don’t know their Walker name meaning, or exactly where they come from originally.
Walker the 12th most common surname in New Zealand, 14th in Australia, 17th in Scotland, 18th in England, 28th in the USA, 41st in Canada, 46th in Wales, 63rd in Northern Ireland, 303rd in South Africa, 349th in the Republic of Ireland and 543rd most common last name in the world. The greatest number of Walkers are found in the USA and the highest density are found in Jamaica.
Cloth Fuller
It is most often considered to be an occupational surname, from the Middle High German/Old English for a fuller or “one who ‘walked’ on raw, damp cloth in order to thicken it”. The fuller would clean wool by scourging and then trampling, or walking, on it in a large vessel filled with the cloth, and a water mixture to get rid of oil and dirt, and thicken the raw cloth.
Occupational surnames eventually ceased to describe the persons actual work and instead became hereditary, although there would have been an overlap of the two at first. As an occupational surname Walker is found more commonly in Northern England and Scotland. The surnames Tucker and Fuller appears to have been the preferred term in southern England. As such the most common origin for the Walker name is originally Scotland or the north of England, even if they travelled to places such as London later.
Forests & Castles
Another occupational origin for the Walker surname, both in Scotland and England, is an Inspector, or Officer of a guard, of a Forest or Castle. They would “walk” around inspecting or protecting a certain location against intruders and thieves. The is one instance of a Walker becoming a Baronet and his heir changing the family name to Forestier-Walker by deed poll to distinguish the “titled” branch of his Walker family from their relations.
Celtic Walker Name Versions
Walker is also an anglicised form of “Mac Siúbhlaigh” in Irish/ Gaelic and “Mac an Fhucadair” (son of the cloth fuller) in Scots Gaelic which is also rendered “Nucator”, “McNucator” or “M’Knockitir”
Because of the occupational origin of the majority of Walkers, it means that in Scotland many different clans may have “Walker families” that were originally part of the clan, just as they may have “Smiths” (Blacksmiths) or “Millers”.
It also means that there are many different genetic “Walker families” even in places where the name was especially frequent in the Middle ages such as Yorkshire, in England, or Grampian in Scotland.
Walker As Descendants Of The Wealceringas Tribe
The surname Walker has been attributed to an Anglo-Saxon tribe in Yorkshire called the Wealceringas. The theory goes that some of their descendants took the surname Wollkere, which in time became Walker.
Wealceringas is developed from the Anglo-Saxon “wealh” meaning “stranger”. Just as the Anglo-Saxons named the Brythonic “strangers” they found in the west of Briton “Welsh” (the Strangers), it is self-evident that that the “strangers” (in the Anglo-Saxon tongue) in Yorkshire would not be Anglo-Saxon themselves.
A greater likelihood would be that the tribe was a Celtic tribe that went on to form the Kingdom of Elmet, one of the last holding out native tribes in Yorkshire during the Saxon & Viking invasions of England. Elmet became the West Ridding of Yorkshire, which has historically had one of the greatest concentration of people holding the Walker surname.
Living by Hadrian’s Wall in Newcastle, England
Some believe that Walker is a locational surname from a place called “Walker”, most often reported to be the Walker district in Newcastle, Northumberland which runs by Hadrian’s Wall. Waucre, which became Walker, would literally translate as “the marsh by the Roman wall” in Old Scandinavian.
Henry Harrison in his “Surnames of the United Kingdom” suggested that it was more likely that “Walker, Newcastle” was actually named after an individual named Walkyr, in the “Inquisitiones Post Mortem” (1268), rather than the other way round.
Living near the Antonine Wall in Scotland
Another likely location, this time in Scotland, for the translation would be along the more northerly Roman Antonine Wall, which ran along Flanders Moss marsh. Although now a 3 mile square nature reserve, Flanders Moss was in times past a massive, treacherous marshland, stretching from the Firth of Forth in the West all the way to the Lake of Menteith.
About 2 and a half miles to the east of Port Menteith, and a mile north of what is left of Flanders Moss was Ballanucator (Walkerstown), and the old Ballanucator Farm (Farm of the Walker).
While the area is just outside the oldest records of territory of the old feudal Earls of Lennox, it is believed that prior to the 1200s Ballanucator would have been well within the Lennox, and is possible that Scandinavian names for family groups may have stuck.
The Lennox is considered by academics to have been part of the “Irish sea zone” and so Hiberno-Norse rather than Scotland proper, buffering the new next door Earldom of Menteith and other areas of Scotland from the threat of Somerled and his descendants in the Isles.
Descendants of the Gangani Tribe
The Gangani tribe of the South West of Ireland, with a colony in Gwynedd North Wales, were recorded by Ptolemy c. 150AD, possibly based in part on a lost work of Pytheas of Massalia, who visited Britain & Ireland in 325BC. It has long been suggested that they descended from the Concani of Spain in the modern day region of Castile and León, who drank the blood of horses and were said to be originally Scythians.
Ptolemy left co-ordinates rather than drawings so we can’t be exactly sure where they were located in Ireland. Even the ancient maps based on his work are interpretations rather than being quite as factual as might assume. The most popular current opinion is somewhere near the Shannon River, though in the past an even more southerly alternative was the considered opinion of most academics.
Etymologists have deduced that the most likely meaning of the root of the tribes name is “ghengh- ‘to go, to walk’… a warrior leader who strides in front”.
Synchronicity?
In our ancient origins of Clan Walker section of the website you’ll see that, fascinatingly, the chiefly line of Clan Walker descends in the male line from a Royal House on the South West coast of Ireland who claimed decent from Scythian Milesians (Gaels from Span). Pre-Surname DNA evidence shows a migration of this line to Scotland in a region that contains tribes and kingdoms associated with horses to the west and what’s left of Flanders Moss to the east.
Earliest Recordings of Individuals with the Walker name
- c. 930 AD (died); Rollo “the Walker” -because he was so big no horse could carry him- 1st Duke of Normandy
- 1080 AS (died); William Walchere, (Bishop of Lindisfarne, Northumberland, England)
- 1260; Robert le Walker (“Assize Court Rolls” of Yorkshire, England)
- 1268; Walkyr (“Inquisitiones Post Mortem”, Northumberland, England)
- 1273; Geoff Le Walkare (“Hundred Rolls” London, England)
- c. 1272-1307; Peter Walkar (“Placita de Quo Warranto”, Gloucestershire, England)
- 1284; Richard le Walkere (Documents for the Abbey of Bec, Warwickshire, England)
- 1324; Thomas dictus Walker (Berwick, Scotland)
- 1361; William Walkere ( Inuernys, Scotland)
- 1376; Andrew and John Fulloni (Buittle, Scotland)
- 1379; Geoffrey le Walkare (London, England)
- 1393; Richard le Walker (Rector of St Elphin, Warrington, Lancashire, England)
- 1393; Johannes Walker (Juror on an inquest, Aldrochty, Scotland)
- 1457; Donald Walcare (St. Leonards, Edinburgh, Scotland)
- 1855 (died) ; Colorow Ignacio Ouray Walkara. Also known as known as “Joseph Walker”, a Shoshone leader of the Utah Native Americans. Walkara means Hawk.