Before They Were Kings
Long before King families appeared in colonial Virginia records, people named King and Kyng were being written into the records of medieval England. The name reaches back more than eight centuries—but those people did not necessarily belong to one family, and the spelling was not yet fixed.
A surname is a trail of records, not a single family tree. In medieval and early-modern England, a clerk wrote what he heard according to the habits of his place and time. One person might therefore appear as King in one record and Kyng, Kynge, or Kinge in another.
That variation matters to genealogists. Searching only the modern spelling can hide the very record that links one generation to the next. It also warns us not to turn a shared name into a shared ancestry without evidence.
When one name was not enough
After William the Conqueror seized England in 1066, he needed to understand the land and wealth of his new kingdom. At Christmas 1085 he ordered a vast survey. The resulting record—compiled in 1086 and later called Domesday Book—named landholders, tenants, estates, resources, and values.
The survey did not invent surnames. It does, however, reveal the practical problem that helped additional names become indispensable: many men shared a small pool of popular given names. A record containing several Roberts, Williams, Walters, Henrys, or Hughs needed another way to identify which person was meant.
Clerks therefore recorded a second description—someone’s parent, occupation, home, origin, rank, or nickname. At first, such descriptions could belong only to that individual. Over generations, many hardened into hereditary surnames.
How a description became a family name
The same practical methods seen around medieval records explain most English surnames—and show exactly where King fits.
Whose child?
John’s son → JohnsonWilliam’s son could become Williamson; Robert’s son could become Robertson or Robson. These are patronymic surnames.
What did they do?
William the tailor → TaylorSmith, Baker, Miller, Dean, Prior, Steward, and many others began as work or social descriptions.
Where were they from?
Robert of Ouilly → DoyleyA person might be identified by a village, country, bridge, wood, field, or another feature of the landscape.
What were they called?
Henry “the King” → KingKing belongs principally here: a ceremonial role, kingly manner, pageant character, or another nickname—not proof of royal descent.
Given names—and surnames reused as given names
Several names repeated in Virginia King records carry clues from different layers of naming history. Robert, Walter, William, and Henry reached England in Norman French forms, although their deeper roots are Germanic. Their familiar forms produced whole families of surnames.
These relationships are research clues, not proof. A given name such as Carver may preserve a family connection, but only records can show why a particular child received it.
“King” did not have to begin in English
The English word descends through Old English cyning/cyng and Middle English king/kyng. Other languages created their own surnames meaning “king.” In North America, some were translated or anglicized as King.
A lively overview of occupational, patronymic, locational, and nickname surnames. It inspired this expanded explanation; the historical claims here are supported by the scholarly and archival sources listed below.
Written into the record
The examples below are selected from the Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland. They are evidence for the age, spelling, and geographic spread of the surname—not a pedigree joining these people together.
Geoffrey King · Cambridgeshire. An early modern-looking form recorded in the twelfth century.
Gaufriidus le King · Suffolk. The article le shows the name functioning as a descriptive byname.
Henry, called “le King” · Staffordshire. A published Staffordshire collection independently preserves a Henry le King among medieval witnesses.
Willelmus Kyng · Theydon Bois, Essex. The given name was Latinized; the surname was written with y.
Johannes Kyng appears in Walton, Yorkshire; Tormoham, Devon; and Hainford, Norfolk. The repeated name in distant counties does not prove one man or one lineage.
Matheo Kyng · Sompting, Sussex, and Henricus Kyng · Ullenhall, Warwickshire.
Willelmus Kyng · Thorney, Suffolk, and another Willelmus Kyng at Crockerhill, Hampshire.
Edwarde Kinge · Didsbury, Lancashire. The final e survives in early parish-era material.
Margerie Kinge · Lichfield, Staffordshire.
One spelling could travel; one surname could begin more than once.
The selected records stretch from Yorkshire and Lancashire to Devon and Sussex. Their spread makes a single-family explanation unnecessary. The same useful nickname could become hereditary in separate places.
The English surname is associated with Middle English king and Old English cyning or cyng. Surname scholars classify it principally as a nickname. It may have described someone thought to have kingly qualities or someone who played the king in a pageant or customary celebration.
A nickname can become a hereditary surname without describing the later family at all. Just as a modern surname such as Bishop or Knight does not prove the office, King does not prove royal blood.
The earlier English word behind the later form.
Forms found in medieval speech and writing.
There is no universal “King family coat of arms.”
English arms were recorded for particular people and hereditary lines. A person with the same surname may admire an historic King coat, but cannot use the surname alone as evidence of descent or entitlement.
The design centered on the shield. In English heraldry, the written blazon defines the design.
The device above the helmet—not a synonym for the entire coat of arms.
Elements surrounding and supporting the shield and crest.
Additional elements that may appear; supporters are not part of every achievement.
Five different arms recorded under King
These modern digital emblazonments visualize selected blazons printed in Burke’s nineteenth-century General Armory. They are evidence of multiple armigerous King lines—not decorations for everyone named King.
King · Hampshire
Or, on a pale azure three regal crowns of the first.
A gold field with three gold crowns arranged on a blue vertical band.
King · Oxfordshire
Per fesse gules and argent, three roses counterchanged.
A red-and-silver field with three roses changing color across the division.
King · Umberslade
Sable, a lion rampant between three crosses crosslet or.
Recorded for Bolton King of Umberslade, Warwickshire, high sheriff in 1830.
King · London, 1591
Sable, a chevron ermine charged with three escallops gules.
Burke records this London coat as granted in 1591, with a talbot’s head for the crest.
King · Exeter, 1691
Sable, two flaunches ermine, a lion rampant between three ducal coronets or.
Burke records this as an Exeter grant of 1691.
The next question is a record question.
By the time English settlers and migrants named King appear in Virginia records, the surname was already old, widespread, and attached to unrelated families. Medieval examples provide context, not automatic ancestors.
The useful question is therefore not “Which King coat of arms is ours?” It is whether records can connect a particular Virginia King—generation by generation—to a particular family in England, Britain, Ireland, or elsewhere.
Follow the evidence
Dates and readings can be refined when a clearer image, a fuller edition, or a primary record becomes available. These links make the present foundation visible.
- Patrick Hanks, Richard Coates, and Peter McClure, eds., The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland, 4 vols. (Oxford University Press, 2016), entry “King.” Principal source for etymology, variants, early bearers, and locations.
- P. H. Reaney and R. M. Wilson, A Dictionary of English Surnames, 3rd ed. (Oxford University Press/Routledge), for English surname method and early forms.
- The National Archives, “Medieval and early modern family history”, guidance for working from archival records.
- College of Arms, Heraldry FAQs, including proving a right to arms and identifying arms or a crest.
- John Burke and Bernard Burke, Encyclopædia of Heraldry; or, General Armory of England, Scotland and Ireland (1851), public-domain scan. Source for the selected King/Kinge blazons visualized above; used as a historical armorial reference, not proof of modern entitlement.
- Staffordshire Record Society, Collections for a History of Staffordshire, digitized public-domain volumes containing edited medieval records, including the independently located Henry le King reference.
- Society for Name Studies in Britain and Ireland, research and reading guidance for British and Irish name studies.
- Open Domesday, the first free online copy of Domesday Book, with searchable people, places, maps, and original folios; data created by Professor J. J. N. Palmer and team.
- Stephen Baxter, Julia Crick, and C. P. Lewis, Making Domesday (Oxford University Press), for scholarship on William the Conqueror’s 1086 survey of England.
- Dictionary of Medieval Names from European Sources, for documented European given-name forms between 500 and 1600.
- Rob Watts, “Where did your surname come from?”, RobWords (12 September 2026), a public-facing overview used as inspiration for the surname-formation explanation; scholarly sources above govern the historical claims.
Visual credits: map markers and styling, heraldic anatomy diagram, and five shield emblazonments were created for this feature. The England outline is credited under the map; shield designs are modern visual interpretations of cited public-domain blazons. Artistic form does not create or imply genealogical entitlement.