Martin and the Norman Connections
The word “Norman” is in itself a Misnomer, because it does not describe a people, but a mixing of two peoples. A “Norman” simply means “North Man” A Norman; however, is a cross between a Viking and a Celt. The Celtic People at the time were spread out over what we now know as Europe and they readily mixed with the Scandinavian adventurers.
What is very interesting to note is that invaders and conquerors normally bring religion and language with them when they settle. The Vikings and the subsequent Norman offspring did neither. They were fully absorbed in all aspects of the native culture.
Consequently, there are areas of Norman settlement in every country in Europe and beyond.
Martins are Normans, regardless of the country. There is evidence that a Martin was a general for William the Conquerer, and before. Though many have adopted the Martin surname for various reasons, genetic Martins are warriors, now and throughout history.
Geoffrey Malaterra characterized the Normans as"specially marked by cunning, despising their own fortune in the hope of winning a greater one, eager after both gain and dominion, given to imitation of all kinds, holding a certain mean between lavishness and greediness, that is, perhaps uniting, as they certainly did, these two seemingly opposite qualities. Their chief men were specially lavish through their desire of good report. They were, moreover, a race skillful in flattery, given to the study of eloquence, so that the very boys were orators, a race altogether unbridled unless held firmly down by the yoke of justice. They were enduring of toil, hunger, and cold whenever fortune laid it on them, given to hunting and hawking, delighting in the pleasure of horses, and of all the weapons and garb of war."
Generally, it is agreed and conceded that the organization of the surname, as we know it today, can be ascribed to the Norman race about 1120. The inspiration for this monumental event was not a whimsical cultural or spiritual happening, is was an economic necessity.And if you're going to consider "surnames"THIS IS WHERE IT ALL BEGAN, throughout most of Europe. This is not an attempt to justify, excuse, criticize, praise or condemn the Norman race. It is a study of surname origins.
The Normans were primarily of Viking origin, descended from Duke Rollo and his Viking pirates, Rollo being a one time Jarl or Earl of Orkney who had been kicked out of northern Norway by the King. Rollo landed in northern France and claimed a chunk. From the mid 10th century, this new and ambitious race ravaged all Europe down to the tip of Sicily, quickly. thoroughly and effectively, despite (or because of) having been converted to Christianity. The powerful land hungry Normans spread themselves thinly but with great determination and ruthlessness. This was a feudal society. Family possessions, land acquisitions, required and acquired an urgently needed identity tag for posterity, a little more sophisticated than Tyson the Terrible, an actual Norman name of great renown, as we shall see. Heritable family ownership and dynasty continuity was paramount, and became the prime motivation for the surname, a tag which followed its own set of crude rules from its inception, and the protocols changed, became more refined, adapted on the fly. These emerging social, quasi legal rules were vital to domain ownership in this exploding feudal empire.
SCOTO-Norman
The term Scoto-Norman (also Scotto-Norman, Franco-Scottish or Franco-Gaelic) is used to described people, families, institutions and archaeological artifacts that were of Norman, Anglo-Norman, French or even Flemish origin, but came to be associated with Scotland in the Middle Ages. It is also used for any of these things when they exhibit syncretism between French or Anglo-French culture on the one hand, and Gaelic culture on the other.
For instance, the Kings of Scotland between the reign of David I and the Stewart period are often described as Scoto-Norman. A classic case of Gaelic and French cultural syncretism would be Lochlann, Lord of Galloway, who used both a Gaelic (Lochlann) and French name (Roland), and kept followers of both languages.
The term is being increasingly used by historians to replace Anglo-Norman when that term pertains to Scotland.
Norman Ireland
Hiberno Norman:
The term Hiberno-Norman is used of those Norman lords who settled in Ireland, admitting little if any real fealty to the Anglo-Norman settlers in England. The prefix "Hiberno" means "relating to Ireland or the Irish", from Hibernia. The de Burghs or Burke Family , FitzGeralds, Butlers and de Berminghams are the more noted among them. ("Fitz" is a particularly Hiberno-Norman prefix).
By the late 16th century, the Hiberno-Normans began to be referred to as the Old English. In the Irish language, they were known as the gaill or "foreigners". Englishmen born in England however were called sassenach or "saxons".
Cambro-Norman
Is a term used for Norman knights who settled in southern Wales after the Norman conquest of England in 1066. Some historians suggest that the term is to be preferred to Anglo-Norman for the Normans who invaded Ireland after 1170 - many of whom originated in Wales. The most prominent example is Richard "Strongbow" de Clare, whose lands in Wales centred around Pembroke and who led the Norman invasion of Ireland. In addition to such Cambro-Norman lords, some of Ireland's most prominent families, including Walsh, Joyce and Griffith, were indigenous Welsh families who came with the Norman invasion. Other indigenous Welsh surnames such as Taaffe which came at this time became very important families within the Pale community.
Italo-Normans
The Italo-Normans, or Siculo-Normans when referring to Sicily, were the Italian-born descendants of the first Norman conquerors to travel to the Mezzogiorno in the first half of the eleventh century. While maintaining much of their distinctly Norman piety and customs of war, they were shaped by the diversity of southern Italy, by the cultures and customs of the Greeks, Lombards, and Arabs.
Normans first arrived in Italy as pilgrims probably either on their way or returning from Jerusalem or visiting the shrine at Monte Gargano in the late tenth and early eleventh century. In 1017, the Lombard lords in Apulia recruited their assistance against the dwindling power of the Byzantine Catapanate of Italy. They soon established vassal states of their own[1] and began to expand their conquests until they were encroaching on the Lombard principalities of Benevento and Capua, Saracen controlled territories, and territory under papal allegiance, as well as Greek. They began the conquest of Sicily in 1061 and it was complete by 1091.
Italo-Normans were the primary Norman mercenaries in the employ of the Byzantine emperors and the Armenians. Many found service in Rome, under the pope, and some went to Spain to join the Reconquista. In 1096, the Normans of Bohemond of Taranto joined the First Crusade. These Italians set up the principality of Antioch in the Levant. The entire Mediterranean world was touched by the unique Italo-Norman civilisation. In 1130, under Roger II, they created a lasting polity like William the Conqueror's in England: the Kingdom of Sicily, encompassing the whole of their conquests in the peninsula and the island.
The Vikings and Normans
The Vikings and Normans are ethnically linked because of their common descent from the Norwegian group of Viking raiders and settlers of the ninth to eleventh centuries. The Vikings per se came directly to Ireland and Scotland during this period, and in Ireland they established the first towns as coastal trading centers, as merchant activity was a natural second stage to their original ferocious naval raiding. They became completely Gaelicized. The twelfth century brought Anglo-Norman settlers to Scotland, and Anglo-Norman invaders to Ireland. The Normans first appear as mixed Danish and Norwegian settlers in tenth-century Normandy, a province of France which these Vikings wrested from the French and made a dukedom, and from which province they subsequently invaded England in 1066. Their original introduction into the Frankish and Gallo-Roman world in Normandy changed military technology forever, for these acculturated Vikings, afterwards known as Normans, swept forward from Normandy into England and later Gaeldom with "Mote and Bailey" castles (where the Gaels had raided, exacted tribute and then gone back to their own territory, the Normans confounded the Irish by actually squatting on the invaded land with castles, thus physically denying it to its erstwhile owners). The Normans also utilized disciplined and armored Frankish-style cavalry, thus introducing the mounted knight. They invaded both England and Ireland with similar success, though in the Gaelic area they were influenced as much as they influenced. They eventually became to a very large degree, "more Irish than the Irish," adopting Gaelic lifestyles, language and kinship patterns.
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