If I follow rightly we’re looking for names that have the biggest difference between their frequency in all anglophone countries and their frequency in the UK.
Looking at how surnames are distributed in the UK, it’s easy to see they’re not uniform. Regional variations obviously exist, and so do class variations as discussed above.
So the question is, can we find some group of people who were less likely than average to have emigrated from the UK, and if so can we expect this group to have distinct surnames based on the skews above (or others)?
As discussed, the best candidates for this are the upper classes. While they would play their role in the colonies, they would usually return to the ancestral home rather than put down roots. People who didn’t have an estate to manage back in the old country were of course much more likely to see permanent emigration as an opportunity to be seized rather than exile.
So, looking through the ranks of the aristocracy, I would expect Grosvenor (Dukes of Westminster), Courtenay (Earls of Exeter) Cavendish (Dukes of Devonshire), Montagu (Dukes of Manchester) etc. to be good candidates.
(This isn’t allowing for bastards and black sheep younger sons spreading hte family name among the Dominions, but I doubt that happened at any kind of frequency which would compete with Graham’s, Smiths, Miller’s etc. migrating en masse.)
For regional surnames, I’d be tempted to give Cornish a shout - your Penhaligon’s and Trelawney’s. I know there was Cornish migration (especially to mining centres) but I have a vague feeling it’s not much, comparatively.
Which creates a mental association to another name in fiction, but that is also real “in the wild”, since it is the name of a place: Molesworth (and you surely can’t get more English than Nigel Molesworth, as any fule kno).
Another option that springs to mind is one that depends on a trade that, AFAIK, is predominantly English (and in only one part of England): Pargeter.
Sorry, I was going for “English” most of all–not specifically Irish, Welsh, Scottish, etc, but thought that these regions may have some names that have achieved prominence in England over the centuries and gotten mainstreamed, so to speak.
Ah, so a name that is used in the Celtic regions is not mainstream. It’s only once it’s been culturally appropriated by the English overlords that it’s mainstream.
I was taught Maths by a Mr Thackray (note variant spelling), but I agree it’s not common. As others have said, ‘common’ and ‘uniquely English’ are probably mutually exclusive.
I think we’ve getting close to finding a narrow window here. I think if I I were to list several of the names suggested so far, that list would make you think “Those people all are English, I bet.”
Assuming that 3/4 of the English-surnamed world lives outside England, it follows the great majority of them are descended from the class of Englishmen who emigrated. This may suggest those with working-class surnames would dominate the expansion. And aristocratic names remained behind in England.