Talk:Bulmer family

Gaelic reference
The article mentions a possible origin of the name Bulmer as Roaring Sea in Gaelic due to the Celtic Tribe the Brigantes ruling historically in the area the name originated. The problem with this is that the Brigantes were not Gaelic speakers and main land British Celtic tribes spoke a Brittonic Celtic language of the same family as Welsh. This is a very different language to Gaelic which is only spoken in Ireland along with a closely related language in Scotland (partly due to historical invasions from Ireland). Therefore there is absolutely no evidence for this assertion which appears to conflate Celtic with Irish. As a result I would recommend it is removed. Cunobeline (talk) 08:05, 28 April 2020 (UTC)


 * I have a copy of a privately printed publication entitled "Historical Notes of the Baronial House of Bulmer". This records that the name Bulmer is derived from the Norse 'Bolvar' (or Bule-maere in Anglo-Saxon) meaning Illustrious Bull, one of Odin's titles, so they may have been descendants of the old Norse Vikings rather than of the Anglo-Saxons or Normans. That sounds more convincing to me. On the other hand, there is a Bulmer family tree on an Ancestry website recording de Bulmers in Normandy pre-Conquest, whose descendants then settled in Brancepeth, County Durham. Michael James 55 (talk) 14:22, 2 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Interesting, I remember reading somewhere that there was a suggestion of a link to Canute, however the records from that time are not exactly reliable or common. In either case I think the reference to Gaelic should be removed as it’s one thing that can certainly be ruled out. We could replace it with something along the lines of “the exact origins are unknown” the village of Bulmer certainly predates the conquest and the Bulmer’s did live in that area so it could be as simple as them taking the local name, as in from Bulmer. Or as you suggest it could be of Norse or Saxon origin (bearing in mind the Saxons worshipped the same gods as the Norse originally) and just be a linguistic coincidence. Cunobeline (talk) 07:46, 5 November 2023 (UTC)