Variants of the Copage/Coppage surname
This is an investigation into the origins of the Copage/Coppage surname but for several centuries the name was subject to numerous variations in spelling. The simple reason for this is that until the late 19th century, the bearers of the surname would almost certainly have been illiterate.
So whenever this rather unusual name was recorded at a baptism, marriage or burial its spelling would depend on whatever the officiating cleric thought he heard, be it Copage, Coppage, Cubbage, Cuppage, Cubbidge, Cobeg, Coppedge, Coppidge, Coppaidge and so on.
For example, John Cubbage lived in the small Warwickshire parish of Packwood in the late seventeenth century. However, when he died in 1695 he was buried as John Cobbeg. And one of his sons, William, was christened as Cubbage but was later recorded as Coppage when his own children were baptised. And when, in turn, one of William’s children, John, got married his name was entered into the register as Copage.
So until the late nineteenth century when literacy became more widespread in England, there are frequent alternative spellings even for the same individual or within the same family line.
Furthermore, searches in genealogical databases such as Ancestry.com can be misleading due to transcription errors with the result that many of the listings are inaccurate.
The original records were digitised by an army of volunteers who went through parish registers and did their best to interpret the barely legible scripts. When coming across an uncommon or undecipherable name they just had to make the best guess they could and move on. The only way to be sure of a spelling is to painstakingly scrutinise other entries written in the same hand to see what the writer intended.
For example, the surnames on the left were all mistakenly transcribed:
These five names from 16th-century records for Solihull were all transcribed as “Coppage”. However the entries on the right were written in the same hand and on close examination it becomes clear that the first letter is “G” (as in George) and not “C” (as in Christian). Furthermore the symbol in the middle of the surname is not “pp” but is “ss” (as in Jane Mosse). So these five individuals were not actually “Coppages” but were all named “Gossage” (a fairly common surname in this area at the time).
In short, the Copage/Coppage surname has been subject to numerous variations in spelling and such orthographical differences are of little consequence. The earliest instances of the surname in Warwickshire were often spelt Cubbage but over time members of this same family were recorded as Copage or Coppage. Individuals with such names as Copage, Coppage, Coppedge, Cubbage, Cubbidge, Cuppage, Cuppidge and so on can all be members of the same family.