Adams: A Surname History (Paperback)

Description

Adams: A Surname History — Volume 46 of The Surname Histories Series. The name from the earth: Adams is the patronymic “son of Adam,” and Adam is the Hebrew word for man, drawn from adama, “earth” — the English, Dutch, and German patronymic, the Scottish McAdam (Mac Adaim), and the American absorptions (Adamopoulos, Adamović, Adamski, Atamian/Adamian) that all became Adams. ADAMS stands No. 42 in the 2010 U.S. Census with 427,865 bearers — No. 39 in 2000 (413,086), a +3.6% rise (+14,779 bearers), three ranks slipped, stated honestly and never as a climb — composition (official 2010 Census surname table): 74.02% White, 19.9% Black, 0.56% Asian and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, 0.79% American Indian/Alaska Native, 2.16% two or more races, 2.57% Hispanic — sitting directly behind Green at #41 and completing the series’ twenty-two-book running echo (Lee #21 → Pérez #22 → Thompson #23 → White #24 → Harris #25 → Sánchez #26 → Clark #27 → Ramírez #28 → Lewis #29 → Robinson #30 → Walker #31 → Young #32 → Allen #33 → King #34 → Wright #35 → Scott #36 → Torres #37 → Nguyen #38 → Hill #39 → Flores #40 → Green #41 → Adams #42). The signature chapter is “The Two Presidents” — John Adams (1735–1826) and John Quincy Adams (1767–1848), father and son, the second and sixth presidents: the Revolution, the diplomacy, the presidencies, and the Fourth of July that took them both — told in full and framed honestly, with two verified portrait plates (Gilbert Stuart’s John Adams, c. 1800–1815, National Gallery of Art, CC0; the 1843 Philip Haas daguerreotype of John Quincy Adams, Metropolitan Museum of Art, public domain). The heraldry is framed honestly too: no single ‘Adams coat of arms’ exists — so the book plates eight as they stand: the Middleton Hall, Carmarthen arms (featured — the shield the vendors sell as the Adams crest), London 1598, Holyland and Loveston, Drummer Grange, Ansty Hall, Paterchurch, and the honest Boylston plate (the differenced arms John Adams actually used — his mother’s) — plus the honest empty shield. The gallery honors Samuel Adams (Copley, 1772) and Abigail Adams (Stuart, 1800/1815) in two more verified portrait plates, with Ansel Adams, Douglas Adams, Bryan Adams, and Amy Adams in prose; and a gazetteer maps the name from Braintree to the Mount Adamses.