Gorringe Family History In The 11th Century.

The name Gorringe reached England in the great wave of Migration following the Norman Conquest of 1066.The Gorringe family lived in the places named Goring in Oxfordshire and sussex. The place-name was originally derived from the old english word Garingas, which means people of Gara. This name is a short form of various compound names with the first portion Gar, which means spear.



Anglo-Norman names tend to be marked by an enormous number of spelling variations.This is largely due to the fact that old and middle english lacked any spelling rules when norman french was introduced in the 11th century. The languages of the english courts at that time were french and latin. These various languages mixed quite freely in the evolving social milieu (which is a french word for enviroment). The final element of this mix is that medieval scribes spelled words according to their sounds rather that any definite rules, so a name was often spelled in as many different ways as the number of documents it appeared in. The name was spelled Goring, Gorring, Goringe, Gorringe, Goreing, Goreng, GÖring, Goringet, Geur, Gerling and many other variations.

First found in sussex where they were anciently seated as Lords of the Manor of Goring.

Because of the political and religious discontent in england, families began to migrate abroad in enormous numbers. Faced with percecution and starvation at home, the open frontiers and generaly less opressive social enviroment of the new world seemed tantalizing indeed to many English people. The trip was difficult, and not all made it unscathed, but many of those who did get to canada and the United States made important contributions to the young nations in which they settled. Some of the first north american settlers with Gorringe name or one of it's variants: Joseph Gorring who settled in Baltimore, Maryland 1820; Elizabeth Gorring settled in Virginia in 1677.