Explore the Family Name Strother

The meaning of Strother

English: habitational name from a place somewhere in northeastern England formerly called (The) Strother, named with Middle English strother, struther, stroder ‘wooded marshland, marsh covered in brushwood’ (Old English strōther). This topographic term was current in Durham, Northumberland, and southern Scotland, but the place which gave rise to the surname has not been certainly identified. A locality called le strother is recorded near the city of Durham c.1299, while another, recorded as le estrother in 1153–95, may have named Strother House in Boldon (Durham), unless the house was named from the surname. William de Strother was a tenant in nearby Offerton, in 1473, and he was probably a member of the Newcastle merchant-cum-gentry family from whom all or most modern bearers inherit their surname. In Northumberland, possibilities include Cold Strother in Kirkheaton and Haughton Strother, although there is no evidence for either place being known simply as The Strother. Alternatively, The Strother may have been a lost district name for either the marshy area around Cold Strother (north of the North Tyne) or that around Haughton Strother (on the south bank of the North Tyne), but again evidence is lacking. The (del) Strother family owned estates near (but not in) both places from at least the late 14th century. In southern Scotland, Struther in Lanarkshire and Struthers in Ayrshire and Fife (from the Older Scots equivalent of Middle English strother) might be considered, but for lack of supporting evidence it has been suggested that Scottish Strother is probably the attested Northumberland surname, whose bearers were major landholders on the Scottish border. History: A William Strother is recorded in VA in 1673, probably the same man who, as William Strouder, was granted land in 1658.

Dictionary of American Family Names, 2nd edition, © Oxford University Press, 2022.

What do people with the surname Strother have in common?

Spoiler alert: it's complicated. People with the same last name are usually no more genetically similar than a randomly sampled group of people from the same population. That said, people with the same surname are more likely to have similar ancestries than randomly sampled individuals. The reason is the tendency of people with similar cultural or geographical backgrounds to preferentially mate with one another. That's why people who share a surname may be more likely to share traits and tendencies in common than people within the general population. Check out the percentages below to see the prevalences of tastes, habits, and traits of people with your surname compared with prevalences among 23andMe users.