My adoptive parent's family surnames were Tidwell, Waldrop, Morgan, and Alexander. Origin?

Question

I've just begun my search for my bio. background but I think it would be helpful to understand the family ties I grew up with.

Answer 1

Origin of a name is completely unrelated to who the actual PERSONS were.  Knowing that a name came from some village in England, or such, isn't going to tell you that.  

Normally, genealogy is based in bio roots.. but there is NOTHING to prohibit you from researching the adoptive line as your "spirit" family.  

Break the research into specific persons, with dates, places, times.  Along the way, you will find such things as the kind of work they did, their education, etc.. and yes, that will often give you insight into them personally.  For example..if grandma was Mary Morgan, you don't look for persons named Morgan.. you find her birth or death record, census, and determine who her parents were.  

It also is very possible that by opening communication with your extended (adoptive) family, you MIGHT run into someone who has info on the bio family.  Many adoptions came about on informal basis, because they knew the family "down the road" who was unable to care for another child, thus arranged an adoption.

Answer 2

Tidwell:

English: reduced form of Tid(e)swell, a habitational name from Tideswell in Derbyshire, so named from the Old English personal name Tidi + Old English wella ‘spring’.

Morgan:

Welsh: from the Old Welsh personal name Morcant, which is of uncertain but ancient etymology.

Irish: importation of the Welsh surname, to which has been assimilated more than one Gaelic surname, notably Ó Muireagáin (see Merrigan).

Scottish: of uncertain origin; probably from a Gaelic personal name cognate with Welsh Morcant.

Alexander:

Scottish, English, German, Dutch; also found in many other cultures: from the personal name Alexander, classical Greek Alexandros, which probably originally meant ‘repulser of men (i.e. of the enemy)’, from alexein ‘to repel’ + andros, genitive of aner ‘man’. Its popularity in the Middle Ages was due mainly to the Macedonian conqueror, Alexander the Great (356–323 bc)—or rather to the hero of the mythical versions of his exploits that gained currency in the so-called Alexander Romances. The name was also borne by various early Christian saints, including a patriarch of Alexandria (adc.250–326), whose main achievement was condemning the Arian heresy. The Gaelic form of the personal name is Alasdair, which has given rise to a number of Scottish and Irish patronymic surnames, for example McAllister. Alexander is a common forename in Scotland, often representing an Anglicized form of the Gaelic name. In North America the form Alexander has absorbed many cases of cognate names from other languages, for example Spanish Alejandro, Italian Alessandro, Greek Alexandropoulos, Russian Aleksandr, etc. (For forms, see Hanks and Hodges 1988.) It has also been adopted as a Jewish name.

Waldrop:

Scottish: metonymic occupational name for someone who was in charge of the garments worn by a feudal lord and his household, from Norman French warde(r) ‘to keep or guard’ + robe ‘garment’