Bow Family History
Bow Name Meaning
English: metonymic occupational name for a maker or seller of
bows, from Middle English bow (Old English boga, from
bugan ‘to bend’). Before the invention of gunpowder, the bow
was an important long-range weapon for shooting game as well as in
warfare. Boga is also found as a personal name in Old English,
and it is possible that this survived into Middle English and so may
lie behind the surname in some instances. In other cases (for example,
Richard atte Bowe, 1306), the name is topographic, from the
same word in the transferred sense ‘arched bridge’, ‘river bend’, an
allusion to their similarity in shape to a drawn bow.Irish: Anglicized form of Gaelic Ó Buadhaigh (see
Bogue).
Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508137-4
93,728
Historical Documents & Family Trees with Bow
Name Distribution of Bow Families
MAP:
England & Wales
Scotland
Number of Bow families
 45 - 87  16 - 44 |
 1 - 15  |
from the 1891 England and Wales Census Data
Number of Bow families
|
56 - 109 19 - 55 |
1 - 18 |
from the 1891 Scotland Census Data
Bow census records
You can see how Bow families moved over time by selecting different Census years.
Census records can tell you little-known facts about your ancestors such as birthplace, occupation and value of personal estate.
View all Bow census records
>
Bow Family Origin
Bow Emigration Information (US)
Click on a circle in the chart to view Bow emigration records
You can find out when most of the Bow families immigrated
to the United States.
You can focus your search to emigration records dating from that era.
Emigration records can tell you an ancestor's name, ship name, port of departure,
port of arrival and destination.
View all Bow emigration records >
from the New York Passenger Lists
Bow Family Occupations
from 1881 UK Census Data
Bow census records
Census records can offer a lot of little known facts about your Bow ancestors, such as occupation.
Occupation can tell you about your ancestors' social status and economic status.
View all Bow census records >
Military Service by Bow
Message Board about Bow
42 Threads, 39
Messages
Browse message boards to get helpful hints from other people researching the name
Bow.
Threads: 42 - Messages: 39
Start a FREE Bow family tree
Starting a family tree at Ancestry is not only the easiest way to organise, preserve
and share your family history, it's also a direct link to missing information about
your roots.
About Ancestry.co.uk
The world's largest family history resource
- Explore over 7 billion genealogical records
- Search 26 million family trees
- Create your FREE family tree
- Follow leaf Hints to follow more ancestors
×