Wyvill

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An English family name, best known through Christopher Wyvill, an eighteenth-century clergyman who campaigned for parliamentary reform
2. A surname of English origin, borne most famously by Christopher Wyvill, a clergyman and eighteenth-century champion of political reform
3. A English family name, associated chiefly with the eighteenth-century reformer Christopher Wyvill and his campaign for parliamentary change

Etymology: Wyvill is a surname, not a common English word. The best-known bearer is Christopher Wyvill (1740–1822), a clergyman and political reformer from Yorkshire who in 1779 founded the Yorkshire Association, which campaigned for a fairer system of parliamentary representation. His family's name was long tied to Constable Burton Hall in North Yorkshire, where Wyvills lived for centuries. The family traces back to Norman times. Their name is a form of "de Wyville," which most likely comes from a Norman place name. The name arrived in England after the Norman Conquest of 1066 and took root in Yorkshire, where it was carried by a landed gentry family. Because the name is a family surname, its spelling varied over the centuries, and "Wyvill" was settled on by the family's later generations. Its origin as a place name means it was first a description of where someone came from, not a word with a meaning of its own.