Talk:Descendants of William Downyll

I believe the page should be titled Descendants of William Dunell and the gen 1 – 2 Williams should have the Dunell surname in place of Downyll. The Dunell surname does go back even further. We have found records from the 16th century in other parts of Somerset, including Minehead in the North. The earliest records of Dunell that I have found so far are Ralph Dunell in the Canterbury Cathedral Archives of 1161, and Hugh and Robert Dunell of Hitchin in the Rotuli Curiae Regis (1198).

I have no evidence of the origins of our surname, other than my father’s DNA test results from Ancestry.com showing predominantly Irish heritage. I believe the most likely origin theories are the latter two listed on the Dunell Family Page, being from the Irish ‘fort of the rock’ or ‘hill fort’, or the English ‘dark’ or ‘brown’.

Tom Dunell