Maverick

I was going to write about the word maverick, rather than the band the mavericks but then I came across some interesting information which deviated me. I knew the derivation of the word, an unbranded animal, usually cattle, usually a motherless calf, which then became synonymous for a person who was independent, different, didn’t follow where others went but carved their own path, even if that meant being a bit awkward and difficult. I think I may have known that it came from someone’s name… and in fact it came from Samuel Maverick who did not brand his cattle, and the word was first recorded as being used in the now usual way in 1867.

That got me thinking about the name Maverick – as a surname and I did a little research. The first time I could find mention of the name Maverick was in a marriage record from 1588 when a Richard Maverick married an Ursula Trezer in London; six years later in our county town of Taunton, Alice Maverick married John Blafferland in 1594. Down in Devon in 1600, John Maverick Clark married Mary Gie and again in seventeenth century Somerset Mary Maverick married and so did William Maverick, but not to each other! Either the same mary or another Mary got married as well in the 1600’s, and there were half a dozen others including yet another (or the same) Mary and a Henry. So it seems that many mavericks came from Somerset… well, I’m not surprised!

Various other Mavericks appear in births and deaths, and there are quite a number of people called Maverick alive now… well about twenty of them! So it is not a common name, in fact it is quite rare, but everyone knows what it means!