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Surnames: Carvin
Classification: Query
Message Board URL:
http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/an/mkH.2ACEB/31.1.1.1
Message Board Post:
I think there are quite possibly two very separate branches of Carvins. One of which is
quite as you describe. I have been to the town of Carvin in France, in 1968. It is an
old, nearly deserted coal mining town not far across the border from Belgium. It seems to
me quite possibly to be the origin of the name of your Norman Carvins. But I think it is
independant from the Carvins from which I came. I believe that its name, Carvin, is
simply what would have naturally come, in the French language, from the earlier latin
"castra venta," town of the (favorable) wind. All the Roman settlements 2000
years ago were called "castra" and the prefix "castra" went on to be
part of the place names of all sorts of Roman forts that were the original sites of towns
founded during the Roman Empire. In France, "castra venta" lost its
"s" and "t" and became "Carvin" directly, I believe, whereas
in Britain "castra" kept its "s" and "t" and became
"cestra," "cestra" (meaning town) reveali!
ng itself in Winchester and Gloucester and Dorcester etc.. I believe that in Wales,
"castra" lost its "s" and "t" just as it did in France, and
their are many such old Roman towns in Wales now called "Caer-" something or
"Car-" something, and I believe Castra Venta became "Caer-Vent" (now
Caer-Went) in Wales. I am less certain how the peoples of Caervent might have made their
way to Ireland, but Wales, like Ireland, was much more resistant to the English kings, as
I understand it, and so tended to be much more Papist and Catholic. It seems to me
probable that there were Norman Carvins from Carvin, France, who ended up in Scotland and
Northern Ireland after the Norman Conquest of 1066, and others who got that name from
Caerwent in Wales. It would seem quite plausible that the Scots-Irish clan might have
participanted in the English Reformation, while the Welsh Clan, having crossed to southern
Ireland, remained Papist and Catholic.
All of which, if true, simply seems to me to suggest that there may be more than one
origin of the name "Carvin" if we go back 1000 years, but if we go back 2000, it
is the same latin name. Castra-Venta.
Sound plausible?