K/NIBB/S  ONE NAME STUDY

Back to Contents

2.  ORIGIN OF THE K/NIBB/S NAME

The origin of the surname is intriguing. 

One theory is that K/NIBB/S is matronymic, coming from the personal name NIBB.  That, it is said, is a rhyming expansion of the pet name IBB for Isabella of Angoulême, Queen to King John.   Isabel was apparrently a popular name at the time when surnames were first starting to be used.  For my part, this doesn't explain how 'KN' was often added to the beginning of the name.  There again, does anyone really know where the KN came from as in eg knife or knight.  The College of Arms have no trace of any armorial bearings for the family earlier than 1759.

Certainly, CNEBA or CNEBBA, the C changing to K in Norman times, was a name among early Saxon or Flemish settlers in about the 7thCentury of our era.  It has been suggested that KNIBB is a modified form of this ancient spelling. 

Others say that KNIBB derives from the Anglo-Saxon 'cnyp', meaning a ship or sailor, the Saxons having arrived in Britain from North Germany.

A further source says that it may have come from Hnaf, an ancient Danish prince.  H and K are apparently interchangeable and F could also become BB.  This would suggest the K/NIBB/S came over with the Vikings between the ninth and the eleventh centuries.

A correspondent goes on to say, 'whether the word was imported or indigenous, in old English a Knepp or Knip [now knap as opposed to knoll] was a steep hill, cliff or hilltop.  In a broader sense it came to mean the point or apex of something, the word became Knib and then Nib, which meant a peak, a tip, the beak of a bird, the prow of a ship, or the nose of a person.  In the publishing industry, the English still refer to a NIB as a short summary of some point.  In medieval England, Nibbe referred to someone with a prominent nose.  Fortunately that came to mean someone prominent generally, such as a gentleman or person of higher order.  Maybe it suggested something about how high he stuck his nose in the air.  The phrase "His Nibs" was a slang term to describe someone who either had or acted as if he had high social rank'

A fair few K/NIBB/S today, it has to be said, have large noses or 'knobs' as some might say!

I was intrigued to find abroad some years ago (was it Holland or Denmark?) that 'knipplers' (like knitters?) were weavers of tapestries and have mused ever since whether the clockmakers turned their nimbleness of hand from cloth to metal.

Well anyway you 'pays your money and takes your choice'.  We should take comfort from the fact that there are certain similarities in the various propositions.

Pieter DONCHE of Belgium advises that a KNIBBE family lived in Flanders from very early times but apparently died out in 1658 in Bruges.  However, there are still representatives in The Netherlands, most probably descendants from KNIBBEs who emigrated to the Northern Netherlands during the religious wars of the late 1500s.  In Flanders, they are almost exclusively found in the district (Viscounty) of Veurne (Furnes), a district of some 50 villages roughly between the Belgian coast and Ypres.

The KNIBBEs in Flanders were a noble family.  Many of them were knights and qualified as such in official records, still kept in Belgian archives.  The oldest records are:

1299: Gillis KNIBBE, elderman of the district (viscounty) of Veurne
1333, 1337, 1338: Harrard KNIBBE, also elderman of Veurne
1348, 1349,: William KNIBBE, elderman of Veurne
1368: Victor KNIBBE, elderman of Veurne
1372, 1374: Hellin KNIBBE, elderman of Veurne
1377: Jacquemart KNIBBE, elderman of Veurne
1399: Renier KNIBBE

The oldest seals (1334, 1368) of a KNIBBE represents a lion 'passant' (walking on four legs) - later seals represent the lion 'rampant' (standing up).  The lion is black on a white background.

From the 1400s onwards, many many Knibbes were eldermen of the district (viscounty) of Veurne.  Several members also became 'landholder' (president) of the council of eldermen of Veurne, such as Omaar KNIBBE (1410), Werin KNIBBE (1412, 1414), Reynaud KNIBBE (1419-1420), Werin KNIBBE (1419-1421) NB: there were always two presidents (one for internal affairs, the other for external affairs), so in 1419 and 1420 two members of the KNIBBE family shared these presidencies).

So did the English K/NIBB/S come from or return from there or was it a case of reverse immigation following an extreme brush with royalty?  The original Harrard KNIB born before 1148 must surely have arrived in England from Normandy where of course William The Conqueror set off for his invasion of England in 1066 - accompanied by a KNIB knight?

Next page

Home Page | Introduction | Contents | Response Form | Latest