Welcome to the website for the Pritlove one-name study. The aim of the study is to collect information about people who have or had Pritlove, Pretlove or similar as a family name. The hope is to connect as many as possible into one family tree.
If you have any questions or comments about the information on this site, please contact us. We look forward to hearing from you.
Information collected for this study suggests that the surname Pritlove, and its close variant Pretlove, comes from a group of parishes that straddle the Essex – Hertfordshire border. In older parish records the name occurs as Pricklow or Priklou – which gives creedence to the meaning. During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the “i” and “e” forms were, to a degree, interchangeable and it is only from the 20th century that we can be sure that Pritlove and Pretlove are distinct names. Even after that, with some handwriting it is not always apparent which form of the name was intended.
The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland, gives the origin of both Pritlove and Pretlove as a nickname from Middle English priken ‘to stab, pierce’ with the Old French love ‘wolf’ (Anglo-Norman French louf), presumably for a hunter of wolves.
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