King: A Surname History (Paperback)

Description

King: A Surname History — Volume 38 of The Surname Histories Series. The relationship name — from Old English cyning/cyng (“king”): the clerk’s name for one who served in the king’s household, or who played the king in the May Day pageant (the King of the May); with the Irish streams (Mac An-Raoi/O’Conraoi — Cunree, Connery — and O’Cionga of Co. Kerry, anglicized King) and the German König/Küng/Koenig in the stream. KING stands No. 34 in the 2010 U.S. Census with 465,422 bearers — up from No. 35 in 2000 (438,986), a +6.0% rise (+26,436 bearers) — sitting directly behind Allen at #33 and completing the series’ fourteen-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). The signature story is Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) — the Montgomery bus boycott (1955–56, 381 days), the founding of the SCLC (1957), the Letter from Birmingham Jail, the March on Washington (August 28, 1963), the Nobel Peace Prize (1964), the FBI’s COINTELPRO surveillance, and the assassination at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis on April 4, 1968 — told in full and framed honestly, with one verified plate: the June 8, 1964 press-conference photograph by Walter Albertin of the New York World-Telegram & Sun (Library of Congress, public domain per the collection’s instrument of gift), shown as a historical document — the one image the rights allow — and no other likeness. The gallery bearers (B.B. King, Carole King, Stephen King, Billie Jean King, Regina King, Larry King) are honored in prose. Six heraldic plates, drawn programmatically from published blazons (King, co. Hants — three regal crowns on gold; King of Abbey Boyle, co. Roscommon — the Irish line of Sir John King, ancestor of the Earls of Kingston; King of London, granted by Camden, Clarenceux; King of Barra, co. Aberdeen, Lord Eythen’s line; King of Exeter, granted 1691; and the blank honest shield), show why no single coat of arms belongs to a surname; and a gazetteer of King places maps Kingston upon Hull (founded 1299), Kingston, New York (first capital of the state, 1777), and King County, Washington (named 1852 for Vice President William R. King — re-designated 2005 for Martin Luther King Jr.).