Origin of the Name Maddox
The ancient history of the name
Maddox was found in the allfamilycrests.com archives.
Over the centuries Surnames developed a wide number of variants. Different spellings of the same name can be traced back to an original root. Additionally when a bearer of a name emigrated it was not uncommon that their original name would be incorrectly transcribed in the record books at their new location. Surnames were also often altered over the years based on how they sounded phonetically and depending on the prevailing political conditions it may have been advantageous to change a name from one language to another.
Variants of the name Maddox
include Maddock, Vaddock, Waddock, Weddick and Madox. This name Maddox is often of Welsh origin but was also adopted by the Gaelic MacMhadoc Sept of County Wexford in Ireland who were a branch of the MacMurroughs.
A sept or clan is a collective term describing a group of persons whose immediate ancestors bore a common surname and inhabited the same territory. Irish septs and clans that are related often belong to even larger groups, sometimes called tribes.
An early anglicized form of this Gaelic name was MacVaddock, with mediaeval and early modern records contain many references to the people of this name and to 'MacVadog's Country' in Counties Wexford and Kilkenny. An unusual synonym of this name is Mayduck which occurs in County Down in Ulster .
The Maddox coat of arms came into existence centuries ago. The process of creating coats of arms (also often called family crests) began in the eleventh century although a form of Proto-Heraldry may have existed in some countries prior to this. The new art of Heraldry made it possible for families and even individual family members to have their very own coat of arms, including all Maddox descendants.