Crum is a Scottish and Ulster surname that lost its front half. The fuller form is McCrum, from Gaelic Mac Cruim, and the word underneath both is crom: bent, crooked, twisted.
It began as a description of a body, not a place. Somebody was known for a stoop, his sons were called after him, and the nickname hardened into a surname no one could explain.
It stayed small: 142 people in the 1901 census of Scotland, ranking 2,653rd. A few owned the largest printworks in Renfrewshire, and a grandson compiled a dictionary Egyptologists still keep to hand.
Where Did the Mac Go?
Nowhere unusual. Gaelic patronymics shed the prefix once families moved into Scots-speaking towns, and the Oxford-backed Dictionary of American Family Names treats Crum as a shortened McCrum, the anglicization of Mac Cruim. McCrumb carries the intrusive b clerks added after m; Magrum came from an ear that heard mac as voiced. Our note on what Mc and Mac actually signal explains why none of it tells you anything.
Bynames of this shape were ordinary in Gaelic and Scots alike. Along Donside, Cruickshank did the same job in Scots, taking the leg instead of the back.
Is Crum a Version of Crombie?
No. Crombie and Abercrombie come from places: Abercrombie in Fife is Pictish, meaning the mouth of the Crombie, a bending river. Crookedness is in there, but it describes water. Our account of the Crombie name and its Irish footprint follows that line.
A second trap: the same dictionary records Crum as an Americanized German Krumm or Dutch Krom, which also mean crooked. Three languages, one idea, one spelling, no shared descent.
Who Were the Crums of Thornliebank?
A linen printer named Robert Osburn leased twelve acres from the Earl of Eglinton on the Auldhouse Burn south of Glasgow and opened a printfield in 1778. He went bankrupt in 1789. John Crum, a Glasgow businessman, bought the wreckage for his sons Alexander and James, who knew what a steady burn was worth to a bleaching trade.
What grew from it was a company village. Thornliebank held barely three families in the 1810s and 1,366 people by 1845, with schooling, housing and sewerage paid for by the firm that employed nearly all of them. The Crums kept the works until 1899; the printworks closed on Christmas Eve 1929. Renfrewshire has older landed names, the Cochranes among them, but few made a place.
What Did Walter Crum Actually Do?
Walter Crum, 1796 to 1867, is why the family matters beyond East Renfrewshire. He studied chemistry at Anderson's University under Thomas Graham, then came home to run it. He published on indigo in 1823, kept a laboratory at the printworks, and pushed the business into bleaching, dyeing and turkey red, turning dyeing from rules of thumb into a science. Our piece on the history of Highland dyes and their colors gives the wider picture.
He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1844. His daughter Margaret married William Thomson, the future Lord Kelvin, in 1852; his son Alexander sat as MP for Renfrewshire; his brother Humphrey took the name Ewing in 1853 under a Strathleven uncle's will.
Alexander's eldest son was Walter Ewing Crum, 1865 to 1944, who gave his working life to Coptic manuscripts. His Coptic Dictionary, in six parts between 1929 and 1939, has never been replaced.
Does the Name Have an Ulster Side?
Yes, though Ulster kept the prefix Scotland dropped. The best-known bearer is William McCrum of Milford, County Armagh, 1865 to 1932. In 1890 he put it to the Irish Football Association that a deliberate foul near goal should cost a free shot. Mocked as the Irishman's motion, it became Law 13 in Glasgow on 2 June 1891, and every penalty kick descends from it.
The two ends touched: Thornliebank's growth pulled in linen workers from the north of Ireland, the traffic our guide to Scots-Irish names describes.
How Do You Trace a Crum Family?
- Search Crum, Crumb, Cromb, McCrum and M'Crum together. The prefix comes and goes within a family.
- Work backward from a statutory certificate, following our guide to Scotland's 1855 civil registration.
- For the Thornliebank line the parish is Eastwood, where company papers survive beside the church records. If your Crums surface first in Pennsylvania or Ohio, test the German possibility before assuming Scotland.
Frequently Asked Questions About the Crum Name
What does the surname Crum mean?
Bent or crooked, from Gaelic Mac Cruim, son of the crooked man, on crom.
Is Crum Scottish or Irish?
Both, from one root. Scotland dropped the prefix and Ulster largely kept it, so a Crum in Renfrewshire and a McCrum in Armagh carry the same name in two states of undress.
Is Crum a clan?
No chief, no clan structure, which is the normal position for a byname surname. Sept rolls sometimes attach McCrum to larger western clans, but those lists are modern compilations.
Sources and Further Reading
- Dictionary of American Family Names: McCrum — Mac Cruim from crom.
- Dictionary of American Family Names: Crum — the Krumm and Krom overlap.
- East Renfrewshire Heritage: Thornliebank — the printfield, the village, the 1929 closure.
- Strathclyde Archives: Walter Crum — Thomas Graham and the 1844 fellowship.
- William McCrum — Milford linen and the 1890 penalty kick.
- Crum in the 1901 Scottish census — 142 bearers, mapped.
- George F. Black, The Surnames of Scotland — Crum and Crombie side by side.