About the Levers One Name Study
Levers is my maiden name and over the past forty years I have been tracing this name as well as all the other names in my family tree.
I registered Levers as a one name study in January 2021 in the hope of correlating my research and adding to it.
My own Levers family comes from Chesterfield in Derbyshire but my ancestors came from the Greasley area of Nottinghamshire. Greasley was the home to numerous Levers families and due to the sheer number of Levers, Leivers, Leevers, Leavers and Leivars families and many of them having the same Christian names, it is difficult to sort them out into families.
Looking at surname distribution maps over the years from 1841 to 1939, the Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire border area is a hotbed for the Levers name.
There was also a small enclave in Cornwall. Work is in progress to see if there is a connection between the two areas.
Variant names
Leivers, Leivars, Leavers, Leevers, etc
In the early records Leevers seems to be dominant but in each family different spellings were used in the census, GRO certificates and parish records.
Eventually, it seems that five different variants have emerged.
Levers, Leivers, Leavers, Leevers and Leivars.
My own family has been Levers since the 1850s or 60s but the ancestors were predominantly recorded as Leivers or Leevers. It was when my gt gt grandfather moved to Chesterfield that the name was consistently written down as Levers.
Name origin
I am still studying the origin of the name Levers name.
Some studies suggest it is a patronymic from Lever 3 (Dictionary of American Family Names © Patrick Hanks 2003, 2006)
Others suggest French in origin.
