Surname History

Some thoughts on possible origins of the BELBIN surname

Since 1988 Terry BELBIN has been in contact with an extraordinary number of family historians around the world looking into the history of their BELBIN ancestors and the origin of the name. However, in all that time it has been difficult to find any solid evidence about its origin. Many suggestions and theories have been put forward but all they seem to do is confuse the issue. The only conclusion to be reached so far is that the name is most likely very old but whether its origins lie in the ancient Persian Empire of 4000 years ago, the Roman Empire of 2000 years ago or somewhere in medieval or more recent English history, one can only wonder. Proof is elusive.

This page sets out some of the more interesting ideas of where the name may come from, and some early usage some of which may be pure hokum but romantic nonetheless. If you have a theory or better evidence of any of the ideas discussed below then please do not hesitate to get in touch.

Decimus Caelius Calvinus Balbinus – Roman Emperor in the year 238 AD

How about a BELBIN Roman Emperor? During the First Roman Empire, which spanned the 310 year period from 27 BC to 284 AD, it seems that a certain Decimus Caelius Calvinus BALBINUS (born in approximately 170 AD) was one of six Emperors in the year 238 AD which was just a few decades short of the fall of Rome. He was elected joint Emperor on 22 April 238 despite being extremely unpopular with the people of Rome. Additionally, he and his joint Emperor Pupienus could not trust each other. The situation only lasted 99 days when on 29 July 238 BALBINUS was dragged naked through the streets of Rome, tortured and then murdered. There are various websites depicting this history including Britannica and The Roman Empire. Unfortunately there is no evidence that Decimus Caelius Calvinus BALBINUS left any descendants, so any claim that he might have been a source of the name can only be something to wonder about. What a pity!

Fra. Auger De Balben – Grand Master of The Knights Templar, c.1160 – 1162 AD

A handwritten note found amongst the papers of the late Edward George Craven BELBIN (1879-1951) read: 

“Auger De Balben, Dauphiny, France. Grand Master of Knight Templars 1161 and died about 3 years later”.

Edward George Craven BELBIN must have considered there was a BELBIN connection to have written this at all. There are many books, not to mention websites devoted to the history of the Crusades and the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, but here is BelbinMania’s potted history should you be interested. 

The origins of the Order of St John go back to about the year 330 AD when Helena, Empress and mother of the Emperor Constantine, set out to discover Calvary and to find all the relics of the passion. After the location was found, the Emperor Constantine, built the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on the site, following which a steady stream of pilgrims sought to visit the place of our Lord’s earthly life. These pilgrimages continued during many hundreds of years, but by the beginning of 700 AD, many ancient centres of Christianity had fallen to Islam, including Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem.

The First Crusade began in 1095 to free Palestine and succeeded on 11th November 1100 when the new Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem was proclaimed.

This is where it gets interesting as in about 1070, before the conquest of Jerusalem by the Crusaders, a Hostel for Pilgrims dedicated to St. John the Almsgiver (later St. John the Baptist) was founded by Benedictine Monks and was run by brothers independent of the Benedictines from that time on, who were known as the ‘Hospitallers’. The Papacy, in 1113 recognized the Hospitallers of Saint-John as a monastic order, and when the first Administrator (later known as Grand Master) of the Order, Peter Gerard died in 1118, his successor the Frenchman Raymond de Puy changed the Order from basically pacific in purpose into armed guards, and soon into fighting monks, participating alongside the Crusaders keeping the road to Jerusalem free from bandits and holding fortresses as well as hospices across the Holy Land. The Order became known as ‘The Poor Knights of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon’, referred to as the ‘Poor Knights’ or the Templars and became independent of the Benedictines. Raymond de Puy followed the example of the Poor Knights, and a military arm was grafted onto the Hospitallers. After Raymond’s death the Order was, according to some histories, headed by Fra Auger de BALBEN between 1160 and 1162, who was apparently like his successor, an elderly Frenchman from the Dauphin. 

Is this sufficient for BELBINS to lay claim to the fact that an early form of the name was in use in France in the 12th Century?

Martyn G D BELBEN of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida has suggested that the name BELBEN may have Scottish origins being Gaelic for Church atop a Hill. This story was repeated by his father and grandfather before him.

An Irish Name from the Middle Ages

The former Family Origin Name Survey (FONS) specialised in the genealogical records of the Middle Ages and in recent years unearthed some interesting 13th and 14th Century documents relating to individuals in Ireland with the name of BALIBYNNE or BALYBIN. Apart from one BELBIN marriage in 1838 believed to be in Dublin (and that was a marriage of a soldier in the Royal Artillery named George BELBIN whose regiment was stationed in Dublin at the time) there has to my knowledge never been anyone named BELBIN having been born in Ireland or having any Irish connection whatsoever. These document revelations are therefore quite intriguing especially if you consider BALIBYNNE or BALYBIN to be early forms of the name.

For example, a Latin book translated as Section for Wages of Infantry, both Crossbowmen and Archers of the English and of Ireland, as well as of Divers Workers retained at the wages of King Edward was published by the London Society of Antiquaries in 1782 and makes reference as follows:

18 March 1300, Ireland - To John de BALIBYNNE, Richard de BALIBYNNE, John Poair and Richard Weston, with carparisoned horses, for their wages and 361 foot archers of Ireland, for the same period 20 3 0 (i.e. Twenty Pounds, Three Shillings and No Pence). 

I believe the same Richard de BALIBYNNE can also be found in Chancery Warrants 14 Edward II 112/5433 where on 9 September 1320 at Clarendon he was to rent the baliwick of the serjeanty of the county of Meath in Ireland at its true value.

A further example from FONS includes an earlier entry dated Easter 1293 from the Calendar of Documents relating to Ireland, 1293-1301

1293.  Easter 24.2 Roll of receipt of issues of the farm of Colp, with its appurtenances, for Master Henry de Bray, of the term of Easter, a. r. 21. Trim. Richard de BALYBIN, of farm of the church of Kilmassan [Kilmessan] for [Henry de Bray] £4 0s 0d

and another

1293. Trinity 47.3 [Roll of receipt of issues of the farm of Colp, &c., for Master Henry de Bray], for the term of Holy Trinity and St. John the Baptist, a. r. 21. Trim. Nicholas de BALIBYN, of arrears of his rent of the term of St. John, a.r. 20 49s 2d

If anyone reading this can expand on this research, it would be exciting to learn more, particularly if these individuals were indeed early BELBINS.

An Old English Name

The BELBIN Coat of Arms illustrated above was recorded as being in use in 1203 and based on proximity of dates alone may conceivably have had a connection with the De Colbarne BELBAN family of Cheshire, but until research is able to confirm to whom the arms were granted, the ownership remains unknown.

The arms were described in The British Herald published by Thomas Robson in 1830 as sa. on a cross ar. five lions ramp. of the first. Sa. is Sable (black) which denotes Honesty and ar. or Argent (white) denotes Peace. As you will see, the arms shown above do not exactly match the British Herald description, but interestingly, John BELBIN of Nova Scotia says that he has a similar copy Coat of Arms where the cross is white on a black background, so it would seem John’s copy is a truer version to the British Herald description. 

The oldest recorded birth found so far in English records is that of Margaret De Colbarne BELBAN in 1250 at Hatton in Cheshire. This single birth is 300 years earlier than most of the oldest records in BELBIN history and is curiously isolated in its location since most Belbins in later centuries are primarily found in Southern England. A century later on 29 October 1351 there is another isolated record of a birth albeit in the south of England. This refers to a titled individual known as Baroness Isabelle ‘Rose’ de BELBIN – Regent of White Marsh, Gloucester (1351-1412) who married Baron William V FitzWilliam de Stevens-Pitt of Highbridge, Somerset. It would be an interesting challenge to find out more.

One unproven source, namely the so-called Surnames Database states that BELBIN is of Anglo-Saxon origin being an English locational surname from a place which now no longer exists. For example, this could possibly be because it was one of those villages or hamlets which were forcibly cleared during the 14th Century, either to make way for sheep pastures, or because of natural disasters such as the Black Death of 1348 which caused abandonment of once thriving settlements. The Surnames Database also suggests that the placename meant the place of the funeral pyre of the Binningas. Apparently, in pre 7th Century old English, the word BEL meant a funeral pyre (or beacon), and BINNA was a personal name and also the name of an old English clan. Unfortunately, the Surnames Database does not go on to expand on what its sources were for such a definitive explanation of the origin of the BELBIN name.

The Dictionary of American Family Names (2nd Edition 2022) by Patrick Hanks and Oxford University Press and The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland (2016 Edition) suggest BELBIN is English (mainly Dorset in origin) and is possibly a nickname from the plant name bellbine being one of many traditional terms for bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis) which is notoriously hard to get rid of (as are Belbins generally!).

The earliest BELBIN found in Dorset records so far appears to be Walter BAILLEBYN in the Lay Subsidy Roll of 1327. He was assessed for 6d. tax in the “Decenna of Colbere in the Hundred of Boclonde Nyeutone” which later on was roughly the Hundred of Sturminster Newton Castle. It’s curious that we have a Margaret De Colbarne Belban and the Decenna of Colbere. A link there, surely? Belbins were still in Colber in the first half of the 18th Century according to the Lay Subsidy and Muster Rolls held in Dorset County Record Office.

During the 16th Century, BALBYNS were paying taxes in Sturminster Newton, Dorset and one, George BELBYN was noted in 1569 in a Tudor Muster Roll .

Later on, the lists of the 1641-42 Protestations and the 1662-1664 Hearth Tax Roll of Sturminster Newton include Belbins who were noted as Royalists during the Civil War and Commonwealth; one, Robert BELBIN, was examined by authorities in 1649 with the penalty of losing his estate if proved “delinquent” against Parliament. 

A French or Spanish Name

Barbara Lamble, in her work The Pitts of Dorset and Richmond N.S.W., stated that when searching for an origin of the name BELBIN she looked at the Duchess of Cleveland’s Battle Abbey Roll of the Norman Conquest. This is supposed to have been a list of William The Conqueror’s companions and is preserved at Battle Abbey in Sussex on the site of his victory over Harold. The Roll contains many instances of sobriquets or nicknames as used by the Normans. Included in the list given by the Duchess is BAILLABIEN and Barbara Lamble concludes that this would appear to be a very logical early form of the name.

Another nickname idea is that BELBIN is derived from the French name BALBON which in turn has it’s origins in the old French term baube meaning stammer or stutter. Richard BELBIN reports that he was on holiday in France in the 1970’s and whilst there a farmer’s wife informed him that the name was French – pronounced BELBAN with an almost silent ‘N’. 

Jon BELBIN of Kent, England informs us that he had once been told that BELLEBIEN originated in France and was a common Huguenot name. During the 16th Century persecutions many Huguenots sought relief and religious asylum in Southern England. It certainly appears, however, that the recorded use of the name in England pre-dates the Huguenots. 

However, there’s a name in Catalonia in Spain which is written BILBENY (the first syllable pronounced bill and the last in rhyme with champagne, i.e. bill+bagne). In Catalan and Spanish the letters B and V have exactly the same sound, namely B. Also, French is spoken in Catalonia, and those who research the surname VILVEN consider that the variation VILVAINE and BILBENY are two different spellings of the same name. As thousands of French families came to northern Catalonia between 1550 and 1700 a good number of Catalan surnames are French. This helps support the theory that the BELBIN name may have originated in France.

Linda BELBEN‘s late father, Russell Henry BELBEN who died in 1999 apparently used to say that his family surname was originally spelt BELBENOIT or BELBINOIT and that it was a Spanish name, not French. Unfortunately, it is not known why Russell BELBEN thought that to be the case, but perhaps it could have been another variant from Catalonia. 

Out of interest, the French penal colony in Guiana known as Devil’s Island had a very famous escapee named Rene BELBENOIT who arrived there in 1922 and fled in 1935 after four unsuccessful escape attempts. He reached Trinidad and Colombia having stowed away on a US freighter. He had originally been sentenced to eight years for stealing from a Countess he served as a valet. During his imprisonment he kept a diary and in 1938 published a book Dry Guillotine which appeared in 10 languages and which had a role to play when public opinion caused France to close its infamous prison colony in 1953. When BELBENOIT reached the United States 22 months after his escape he was sentenced to 15 months for illegal entry to the country. Later in 1958 he became an American citizen.

A German Name

In an article written by J.E. Calder and published in three instalments in the Hobart Mercury newspaper on 2nd, 8th and 9th April 1880 was a narrative interview with so called living almanac James BELBIN (b. 1803) who was the the son of James and Susanna BELBIN. James senior was sometimes referred to as James BELBIN The Emancipist and was born in London in 1771 where his father, according to Calder, was a brewer of German origin. Unfortunately no other information about this ancestry was disclosed by Calder, so we are none the wiser. However, the article has been transcribed in full and if you want an extremely long, but very interesting read, then CLICK HERE. It is a fascinating account.

Additionally, a suggestion once made was that the German town of BELLEBEN could be a possible place of origin. There is a history of the town by Hans Friedrich published c. 1995 but it’s in German although I can make out that the town is at least 1000 years old. 

Volker Lange, the former webmaster of the now defunct BELLEBEN website informed BelbinMania’s intrepid American researcher Ed BELBIN that BELLEBEN, as well as all settlements with names ending with the suffix leben, indicates that they were founded by medieval German tribes. He also added, as a point of interest that the anglos tribe settled in an area between the city of Schonen in southern Norway and the Thuringia mountains in Germany in the 5th century. Later on, the anglos went to Britain and founded the English Kingdom.

The suffix leben has a similar meaning to heritage of a chief. It comes from the old German word leve meaning heritage. The village of BELLEBEN is named as BENLEVE in ancient books and accordingly the name BENALEVE could be the heritage of a chief BENNO who therefore could presumably have been the founder or conqueror of BELLEBEN village.

As an aside, it was noted that in German telephone directories for 2000 that there was no-one listed by the name of BELLEBEN but Linda BELBEN said that there was one BELBIN in Berlin and also a BELBEN family in Dellfield, but then these could easily be people who have moved to Germany in recent times. In the region of Stuttgart there are some families with the name BELLEBAUM, BELLEDIN and BELLEBNA, which may, or may not, be a variation of the BELBIN name.

A Russian, Ukrainian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Macedonian or Serbian Name

In 1998 Ray BELBIN advised that he met a University Dean of Polish descent in Queensland, Australia who immediately recognised the name BELBIN or BALBON as a very common Russian name. Richard BELBIN tells us that he met a Russian who also claimed it was a Russian name but pronounced WOLBIN. 

An Ancient Persian Name

As referenced above, the BALABAN name may have been used by the Persians some 4000 years ago when they began to use the term BALABANS to describe the three leading soldiers of a battalion. For centuries the land which now forms the modern state of The Islamic Republic of Iran was of course known as Persia, as it was not until 1935 that the modern Iranian state came into being. Iranian dynasties can be traced back to 3000 BC and the BALABAN name and its derivatives were apparently in use in that region for much of the period since then, so it is a truly ancient name. 

In the Governorate or Province of Ilam (Ostan-e Ilam) which is a border province in the west of Iran (some sixty miles due east of Baghdad in Iraq) there is a populated area some 1265 metres high in the mountainous terrain of the Zagros Mountains and bizarrely it is known as BELBIN. This place has also been referred to as BALBAN and BALEYN but it is striking that the name is there at all. The geographical co-ordinates are 33° 32′ 25″ North: 46° 27′ 9″ East and the native language of the place is Farsi. I have indicated the approximate location of BELBIN on the map shown here but a more detailed satellite image can be found at Tageo.com.

How this remote mountain hamlet can conceivably be connected with the rest of us BELBINS is just a complete mystery. Clearly, the odds must be that it is named after the BALABANS of ancient Persia rather than having any type of link with 16th Century English Folk from Dorset but finding useful information, bearing in mind the political extremes of Iran in the 21st Century, is most likely impossible. 

Conclusion, so far….

If you have read right through this page you’ll understand why it is not particularly easy to form any reasonable conclusion about how the name BELBIN may have originated, and by the same token, how easy it may be to jump to ill-founded conclusions. The only conclusion that can perhaps be made is that there is enough available evidence to suggest that variations of the name or names which are similar in sound or pronunciation as the modern day names of BELBIN and BELBEN did exist a very long time ago, and may somehow be connected with those of us who have carried the name for the last five centuries or so in Southern England.