Where did my last name "Fripp" come from?

Question

I am African American and I looked up my fathers name and found a man that lived in the 1800's with the same name. His siblings also have the same name as my uncles.

Answer 1

Fripp Name Meaning and History

English: of uncertain derivation; possibly a metonymic occupational name for a dealer in old clothes, from a derivative of Old French frepe ‘rag’, from frip(i)er ‘to tear to rags’.

Answer 2

Wild guess that your history absolutely goes back to South Carolina.  Fripp Island was a land grant in the 1700s to Johannes Fripp, a privateer.  For someone African American, it turns out that few persons prior to 1865 had surnames, since they were slaves. (sorry.. genealogy becomes factual, not judgement).  After the Civil war, the freed persons took surnames, SOMETIMES from the prior owners, but not always. If your family originated on/near the Island, it would be logical to take that.

It always is a possibility that your ancestry includes mixed ancestry from a white/black couple.  In that case (if the person is identifiable), you would work your ancestry from that person. It may or may not be a Fripp.  Without that, there are records becoming more and more accessible to work back, prior to emancipation.

www.rootsweb.com has a guide to starting research on its front page. You would use the same sources to work back from yourself, to earlier records. You may well find that the men you located are distantly related.

Particularly for you.. the surname is not always going to have any real connection to where the name originated.

Answer 3

Niajne,

Wendy is correct.  Although the surname FRIPP originated somewhere, your surname may have been acquired solely based on where your ancestor's lived when surnames began to be used. Of course, there could be an actual connection to the FRIPP family, but that could be harder to ascertain as the parentage of some relationships just would not have been made public.  

I have access to the Freedman's Bank Records post U.S. Civil War.   If you recall from your history classes, the Freedman's Bureau was formed during the Reconstruction Period to assist former slaves and others.

There are 15 files for FRIPP and one for FRIP! The file information gives location, additional family members, locations of employment, etc. The FRIP reference is for Georgia and I only checked one FRIPP entry, but it was in SC.

Since you have some first names, email me privately and I will see if I can locate a match for you.  If you know what state or area of a state that could be helpful, as well.

Searching your family roots can be quite an adventure once you began the journey. :)

Answer 4

Recorded in a number of spellings including Frip, Fripp, Fripps, Frape and Phripp, this is an English medieval surname. It is one of a group of nickname developments such as Flis, Phip, and Phil of the famous Ancient Greek personal, and later surname, 'Phillipos', meaning 'lover of horses'. There are estimated to be over three hundred variations of the surname ranging from the English and French Phillip and Phillipe, to the German Lipgens, and the Russian Filipchikov. However spelt the name was first introduced into Europe by the famous Knight Templars (Crusaders) when they returned home in the 11th and 12th centuries. This was after their long and ultimately unsuccessful attempts to 'free' the Holy Land from the Muslims. Normally such 'introduced' names were biblical, the Crusades being a time of Christian revival, but in this case the historical reference has been stretched somewhat to include Alexander, the Great, who was certainly no Christian! In this specific spelling the first known recording in the early English church registers may be that of William Frip, at the famous church of St Dunstans in the East, Stepney, city of London, on June 15th 1579, whilst Cornelia Fripp married Edras Wallis, at St Nicholas, Deptford, Kent, on May 14th 1581. Other examples are those of John and Mary Fripps, witnesses at St Pauls Church, Covent Garden, London, on September 29th 1717, and in the USA the earliest recording that we have appears to be that of John I Fripp, at Pleasant Valley Presbyterian Church, Duchess, New York State, on May 4th 1814.