…. the Name

While MURDUCK as a human surname has been found in documents from England from the late 1500s on, there are few people alive today who continue to be known by this surname.

The earliest usage of the surname in England can be traced in documents from a small parish in Worcestershire, in the late 1500s. The spelling appears to have morphed to the more common Murdock by the mid-1600s, and no descendants are known to be alive today.

Other small pockets of usage have appeared in Essex County, England, from the mid-1600s, and sporadically in Norfolk County, England, a short while later. No clear link between these originating lineages have appeared so far. Descendants of the Essex County originator are known to live today in England, Canada and the United States. All descendants of the Norfolk crew appear to have become entrenched with a surname recorded as MUDDOCK.

The surname Murduck first appears in documents originating from the United States in the 1780s. A family which wore this surname appeared in Philadelphia by 1780, rose to prominence, and quickly flamed out. A man named Murduck appears in other records from the US, following his birth in either Vermont or upstate New York in about 1780 or 1790. Some of his descendants are known as Murduck today, but most go by Murdock. And a man who may have been born in Pennsylvania around 1780, lived out his adult days in Virginia, travelling successively down the Shenandoah Valley. Again, some of his descendants are known as Murduck today, but most also go by Murdock.

Some sporadic, individual instances of the name spelled as Murduck pop up in all sorts of documents and records from around the world. But many of these can be seen as either mis-spellings when written or pubished, or as incorrectly rendered ‘optical character recognition’ instances.

And there are more recent examples of a number of things which have been given this name – principal among them is ‘Murduck – The Original Scrubba-Ducky‘ a toy which first appeared around 1990, and still enjoys popularity in the used collectible world today.