In 1499 the clerks of the Scottish exchequer recorded that "the said Ferquhar was and remanit in the kingis warde", and the Scots word that shut Ferquhar behind a door is the word that gave other men the surname Ward.
In older Scots, ward covers the guard, the place he stands and the prisoner he stands over. The surname took the first sense. But a completely separate Ward, Irish and not occupational at all, arrived in force in the nineteenth century and probably accounts for most of the Scottish total.
What Did "Ward" Mean in Older Scots?
The Older Scottish Tongue lists the senses in an order worth following. To hold a place "in ward" is to have it in your keeping, on record by about 1375. A ward is also a position in a castle's defenses, the spot where a guard was posted. And from the fourteenth century a ward is a place of custody or imprisonment.
Barbour's Brus, finished around 1375, has two men who "the toun had all in ward". The Kingis Quair, written by a king who knew the subject at first hand, has a prisoner "In strayte ward and in strong prisoun". Same word, opposite ends of the door.
Where Does the Surname Come From?
From the job. The Oxford dictionary of family names gives Ward as an occupational name for a watchman or guard, from Middle English ward, itself Old English weard, which served as both agent noun and abstract noun. That double duty is why the word slid so easily between the man and the task.
It belongs with the Lowland surnames taken from what somebody did for a living, alongside Chambers, Spence and Marshall. A watchman was not a grand post, which is why so many unrelated families share it.
Is the Scottish Ward the Same Name as the Irish Ward?
No. Getting this wrong is the commonest mistake made with the surname.
The Irish Ward anglicizes Mac an Bhaird, "son of the poet", by way of McWard. It is a learned family name, not a watchman's: three separate branches of Mac an Bhaird served as hereditary poets to Gaelic lords, and there is no etymological connection to Old English weard whatever. The two names collided in English spelling and nowhere else. Our history of the Irish Ward name and the bardic families behind it covers that side, and our roundup of Irish occupational surnames shows how differently the Gaelic system built its names.
Why Are There So Many Wards in Scotland?
The 1901 census returned 3,008 Wards in Scotland, ranking the name 275th. For an occupational surname with no clan, territory or chiefly line, that is far too many to be explained by watchmen.
The reasonable reading is Irish migration into the industrial west from the 1840s. But a census counts heads, not origins: it will not tell you which Ward descends from a Donegal poet and which from a Berwickshire night watch. Our study of the Dempsey name in Lanarkshire follows one such surname, and for lines that came the other way, through Ulster, our guide to Plantation surnames is the place to start.
What About the King's Doorward?
Here is the Scottish twist. The Oxford dictionary notes that the office of king's doorward in medieval Scotland was hereditary and carried considerable honor. It was custody of the royal household's access, and it made a family.
That family was Alan Durward's. He inherited the post of hostarius from his father Thomas de Lundin, held the justiciarship of Scotia with Alexander Comyn, Earl of Buchan, and at points governed the kingdom during Alexander III's minority. He died in 1275, buried in the abbey of Coupar Angus, and the kingdom he had helped steer came apart after Alexander III died in 1286.
The surname out of that office, though, was Durward, "door-ward", not Ward. Scotland's most consequential ward kept the compound, which is a corrective to any claim that a Ward line runs back to the royal doorwards.
Are Ward, Warden and Wardlaw Related?
They share a syllable and little else. The Oxford dictionary files Warden with Wardlaw and Wardle, all built on the watch element, but each has its own families. Wardlaw is a territorial name of independent standing. Ward is not a shortened form of any of them, and searching them together buries one line under three.
How Do You Tell One Ward Line from Another?
- Get to a post-1855 Scottish certificate first. Parents' birthplaces and the mother's maiden name usually separate an Irish-descended Ward from a long-settled Scottish one in two generations.
- If the trail points to Ireland, switch to Catholic parish registers and the Mac an Bhaird heartlands, not English occupational sources.
- If it points to Scotland or northern England, search Ward and Warde together and expect burgh records, not charters: watchmen do not appear in land grants.
- Keep Durward and Wardrop out of the search set, and run the rest through ScotlandsPeople, which holds all three record sets together.
Own a Piece of Ward Heritage
Two names, one spelling, both worth having: the watchman on the wall and the poet at the lord's shoulder. The pieces reflect that split. A mug, a garden flag with a lion emblem and a silver-framed ornament put the family crest over a woven tartan, while a blanket, a coaster set and a ceramic ornament carry it on the Irish National Tartan for lines tracing to Mac an Bhaird. There is no chief of Ward and no pattern attached to it on either side of the water, so the Scottish weave is a design choice, a distinction our guide to tartan convention works through.
Ward Surname Crest Garden Flag with a Lion Emblem
Frequently Asked Questions About the Ward Name
What does the surname Ward mean?
In its English and Scots form, a watchman or guard, from Old English weard. In its Irish form, nothing of the kind: it stands for Mac an Bhaird, "son of the poet".
Is Ward a Scottish name?
It occurs in Scotland in real numbers but is not a native Scottish kindred name: either the occupational name shared with England, or the anglicized Irish surname carried in by nineteenth-century migration.
Does Ward have a chief, a clan society or a tartan?
No recognized chief, no clan organization, and no pattern registered to Ward in either country. Nor is Ward the same surname as Durward, which kept both halves.
Sources and Further Reading
- DOST entry for ward, Dictionaries of the Scots Language. The Barbour and 1499 exchequer quotations.
- Oxford Dictionary of Family Names: Ward. Old English weard, Mac an Bhaird, and the king's doorward.
- Alan Durward. The hostarius office and his burial in 1275.
- Ward in the 1901 census. 3,008 bearers, ranked 275th.
- ScotlandsPeople. Statutory, parish and census records, from National Records of Scotland.
A name meaning the guard and the guarded at once, which reached Scotland twice from two directions, is worth a second look before anyone claims it. Ward pieces are here, out of a catalog of over 2,000 names.