Surname FRIEND

[Sue1]

Is this surname by any chance Jewish does anyone know?

Sue

[Jill on the A272]

Quite common in Sussex, but not Jewish here. It often crops up as a forename too.

[keldon]

This page my help, and as Jill says, clusters in Sussex and Kent. But of course, this does not reveal their religion. A search of the 1891 census gives very few born in Russia or Germany. Search the 1851 census and the same county clusters are there.

http://www.ancestry.co.uk/name-origin?surname=friend

[Sue1]

Many thanks to both of you. I was curious, not so much about the name which I wouldn't have thought WAS Jewish but I found him living in Shirley, Hampshire and there is some connection with a Shalom Centre although not quite sure what.
His mother, the ancestor I am researching, a Rowland, married his father in the Channel Islands, Guy Archibald Rowland Friend is the son.
[My middle name is Esther and I am not Jewish but have often been asked if I am!]

Sue

[Olde Crone Holden]

Sue

Don't know if this is relevant in your case, but many Shalom centres are not actually Jewish, but are charitable endeavours of various sorts. Shalom is the name of several Care Homes, which have no religious affiliation. There is also a "Happy Clappy" type religion called Shalom (No offence intended) which is not Jewish.

Many many Jews have changed their names from something obviously Jewish to something else, so the surname Friend might not be the original one if they were Jewish.

OC

[Sue1]

Thanks OC. I did wonder if it could have been some kind of non-Jewish organisation.
The chap on my Tree, if he was Jewish, married a gentile so it doesn't sound as if he was practising his religion if he was Jewish.
As to changing names - I actually used to work with a girl whose surname was Lee but had been Levy.
Presumably this was due to anti-Semitism..........I was shocked to see, on visiting the Museum of London some years ago, that this country threw all the Jews out as far back as the 1300s - not the sort of thing you are taught at school.

Sue