The Collins Y DNA Project

Basic Research Resources

There is a rough sketch of Collins in the British Isles overall on the FTDNA project website. Extracts from the Office of National Statistics database for England, Wales, and the Isle of Man from 2002 ranks Collins as #59 in the most common names.

Collins in the British Isles is attested as early as the 1000's in Hodnet, Shropshire (Salop) as Collung of Steel. Shropshire was in the western part of the Kingdom of Mercia along the Wales border. (The kingdoms of England were unified by King Cnut around 1015, a few decades before the Norman conquest.) A Collins resided in Hodnet. Some suggest this was a Saxon individual and others suggest an Old Norse source for the name.1, 2, 3

Another citation is Ceawlin, a Saxon king (d. 592 C.E.), as the source of the personal name Colin and the surname.

Besides Collung of Steel in Shropshire, other pertinent citations from the Domesday book survey of 1086 (20 years after William the Conqueror and the Norman Invasion), include but may not be limited to: Colne, father of Edric in Derbyshire; Colwin the Reeve and Aelfric Colling in Devon; Alward Colling of Dorset and Wiltshire; and Culling (the Burgess?) in Suffolk and Essex.

The Collins name emerged from England via multiple paths. It was introduced through the Saxons, perhaps from the Vikings, and perhaps from the Normans. Over time, several similar names may have blended and merged into fewer forms. Within the last few centuries there has been the additional complication of Collinses from Ireland, with their own ancient ethnic backgrounds, settling in England, and for that matter, English Collins settlers in Ireland. So we could see British Isle Collins, Collings, Collen, under numerous Y-DNA haplogroups.

Attestations from the Domesday Book

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Notes

1. Anderson, John Corbet. Shropshire: its early history and antiquities. 1864. p. 377 lists the Domesday Hundred of Odenet. Under the place of Steel are the names Algar, Collinc, Brictric, and Turgar.

2. Open Domesday lists this individual as Kollung.

3. University of Hull quotes Pre-Conquest Personal Names of Domesday Book by von Feilitzen who on page 307 proposes the Domesday form Collinc is Old Norse Kollungr. The name Kollungr also appears in Domesday 6, 49 in neighboring Derbyshire, to the north.

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