Description
The name that began with a god of war — and was carried by a saint, a reformer, a president, and a dreamer.
MARTIN: A Surname History is the twenty-fourth volume of Tamara Gribble’s beloved coffee-table series on the stories behind family names — a richly illustrated journey through one of the most widespread surnames on earth.
From the Latin Martinus — “of Mars, the Roman god of war” — through the saint who made it famous across medieval Europe, Martin became a truly polygenetic name: English, French, Irish, Scottish, and Spanish (Martín) strands, each with its own story, none descended from a single bloodline. Trace it from the Norman Exchequer rolls of 1180, through the Scottish court of William the Lion, the parish registers of Cornwall and Kent, and the three Irish roots — Ó Mártain, Mac Giolla Mhártain, and the Norman Tribes of Galway. Follow it across the water with French Canada, the 1779 Canary-Islander colonists of Louisiana, and the great English and Irish migrations.
The signature story is Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) — from the Montgomery bus boycott to the March on Washington, the Nobel Peace Prize to Memphis — told with dignity and honesty, illustrated with a rare public-domain press photograph. The gallery gathers Martin Luther (in a lifetime Cranach portrait), Martin Van Buren, Dean Martin, Billy Martin, Mary Martin, and more. Four heraldic plates — drawn from the printed pages of Burke’s General Armory (1884) — carry the series’ standing rule: arms belong to families, never to surnames.
With its signature black-and-gold design, museum-plate portraits, and the honest method readers trust — what couldn’t be verified isn’t in the book — Martin is a keepsake for everyone who bears the name, past, present, and future.
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.