Origin of the Name Woods
The ancient history of the name
Woods was found in the allfamilycrests.com archives. Woods is a locality name meaning 'at the wood', from a person who lived in a forest. Variants include Wood, Woodes, Woode, Wooder, Woodman, Wooding and Wode. This name is of Celtic origin and is popular throughout England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. It is found in many mediaeval manuscripts in the above islands. Examples of such are an Andrew Wode, County Oxfordshire, a Richard de la Wode, County Oxfordshire and an Elias in le Wode, County Cambridgeshire, who were all recorded in the 'Hundred Rolls', England, in the year 1273.
In Ireland this name and its variants were introduced into Ulster Province by settlers who arrived from England and Scotland, especially during the seventeenth century. It was the 'Plantations of Ireland' in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that marked the end of Gaelic supremacy in Ireland. While the influx of settlers in the wake of the earlier Anglo-Norman invasion of the twelfth century resulted in a full integration into Irish society of the new arrivals, the same never occurred with the Ulster Planters who maintained their own distinct identity.
Woods can also be an anglicized form of several Gaelic names which are more often anglicized as MacIlhoyle, McEnhill, Quilty and Quilly.
The Woods 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 Woods descendants.