Origin/meaning of surname Deves?

Question

I am researching my family tree (UK) and out of interest was trying to find the origin and meaning of the various surnames in my tree. Many of them are fairly straight forward (Appleton, Wright, Barrow, Royce etc) but I am not having much luck with Deves. Any help would be greatly appricated!

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

There are some companies called Deves but if you go to ancentry.com you can get some more help.  Good Luck

Answer 2

It is a common belief that all names have a meaning.. but it is not always correct.  One example of a name in my research is Fullingim.  The reality is that the immigrant from England to the US was named Fillingham, which is a village in Lincolnshire. What happened was the name got trampled along the line, and WOUND UP being something completely different.  The lineage is the same... the label is a minor point.  And for the end result.. the only "meaning" is that some clerk somewhere wrote it down, as he thought it should be spelled.  

One source you can use is www.familysearch.org.. what it does have, is transcribed records from parishes, and other places. More important, it groups names that SOUND the same.. and in some cases, Deves might be a mispelling of something else. By tracing your actual ancestry back, you might find that you descend from one of those alternate spellings.  A surname database will not necessarily have that flexibility.

Answer 3

This may be a variant spelling of the surname Deves :

Devas

Recorded in England as de Vas, Devas, and Vas, and in France as Vas, Vaslin, Vass, Vasse, and possible others, this is a French surname. In the British Isles it is one which has been well recorded since the time of the famous Huguenot Protestant refugees in the 17th century. It is probably locational from a place or places called Vars in the departements of Haute-Saone and Charente, although in ancient times the word vass described tenanted lands, so it is possible that it was from that origin. Examples of early recordings taken from surviving registers of Greater London include Jaques de Vas at the famous Huguenot church in the city known as the French Church, Threadneedle Street. This was on December 20th 1696, and again at the same place but on July 16th 1699, when the surname spelling is entered as Devas. In France we have such recordings as Pierre Vas and his wife Marie at Conde-sure- -L'Escaut, Nord, on February 8th 1626, Antoine Vasse at Vireux-Molhain, Meurthe-et-Moselle, on May 28th 1658. Curiously in France we cannot find a recording with the 'de' prefix. This suggest that when the original nameholders entered England they were probably asked where they came from. To which they would naturally answer 'de Vars' or perhaps 'de Vass', and this became the surname.