Hulse
A Cheshire surname from a place-name, originally meaning someone who came from Hulse in Great Budworth.
The #5,164 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 45,565 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Hulse is a locational surname taken from Hulse, a township in Great Budworth, Cheshire. In older surname books it is treated as a name for someone who had moved from that place into another community. The place-name itself is the key source of the surname; the surname does not appear to have a separate independent meaning beyond that local origin.
History
Nineteenth-century surname dictionaries place Hulse chiefly in Cheshire and nearby areas of England. It appears in medieval and post-medieval records in forms such as Halse and Hulse, reflecting normal spelling variation before modern standardization. The surname later spread beyond its Cheshire homeland, and it is now found in English-speaking countries including the United States.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
One of the classic surname references specifically ties Hulse to a township in Great Budworth, Cheshire, which helped make its local origin especially clear to later genealogists.
From the historical record
“Northumberland, and Cheshire. HULSE. A township in Cheshire. IIULTON. "Hulton is in the parish of Dean (co. Lancaster) and it gave name to Bleythen, called de Hulton, in the reign of Henry II., and from him this ancient family, still seated at their ancestral and original manor, are regularly descended." Baines's…”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom