Liskeard, Cornwall, an ancient stannary (Cornish mining locality) and market town (2001).

PLEASE NOTE: Footnotes have been left by Earl Wiler. The original text without these notes was written by Harold Cornelius Cardew-Rendle.

The name Cardew is indigenous only to Cornwall and Cumbria.

In Cornwall it appears as a place-name in the parishes of Trefalga and Warbstow, while the variant Carthew is the name of a hamlet in Treverbyn, a parish formed out of St. Austell in 1846; of farms in St. Issey, Wendron and Madron; and Carthews or Carthew’s Tenement is a field-name at Engollan (or Hengollen Vean) in St. Eval.

In Cumbria the name is represented by the hamlets of Cardew and Cardew lees, part of the manor and tithing or Cardew, in the parish of Dalston, near Cumdivock, some six miles to the south of Carlisle.

The etymology of the name is not wholly free from doubt though there is general agreement that it is of Celtic (Brythonic/Cornish) origin; the balance of opinion is clearly in favour of the names Carthew and Cardew being derived from caer "castle" or "fort" and du "black" or "dark"*. Under the ordinary laws of Brythonic phonetics the initial d in du would be mutated to th after the feminine noun caer, and thus caer du would pronounce Carthew rather than Cardew**. The form Cardew was doubtless the result of early modern English habits of speech which have converted the earlier and more correct burthen into burden, murther into murder, and afforth into afford***.

It seems certain that the surnames Carthew and Cardew were originally derived from the places of those names. Previous to the early part of the seventeenth century, and later, though not to so marked an extent, there was no fixed spelling of personal names, as all spelling was broadly based upon phonetic principles. The names Carthew and Cardew were interchangeable till about 1625 when the demarcation became more pronounced; a deed in the College of Arms shows that the family of Carthew of Woodbridge Abbey trace their descent from Randulph de Cardu, living in the reign of King Edward II****. Consequently no attempt has been made in the present work to trace the genealogy of the several families of the name Cardew to a date anterior to the establishment of parish registers of baptisms, marriages and burials in 1538.

One of the places in Cornwall where persons of the name Cardew lived during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was the borough of Liskeard. Although the registers of the parish of St. Martin, Liskeard, are preserved from the year 1539, there is to be found no mention of the name Cardew prior to 1550; from that date until about the third quarter of the succeeding century the name appears with some regularity in the Liskeard records but then the families concerned seem to have left the town or to have become extinct.

*Although less likely, ”du" may have alternatively been "duw", Cornish for "god"."Cardew" may instead stem from the term "god's fortress".

**Contrary to the provided pronunciation of "Carthew", "caer du" would be pronounced "kire thu" in the Cornish language.

***This may have been because of the removal of the "þ" character from the English alphabet, which was pronounced like "th". An early spelling of “Cardew” may have been “Carþew”.

****An alternative hypothesis is that the "th" was dropped to make the name sound more French, however this theory becomes less plausible after the 13th century.