WP White Pages Hull

Earle Surname: Meaning, Origin & Hull Shipbuilders

Updated 13 Nov 2026

Earle is best known in Hull for ships. A shipbuilding yard founded by two brothers named Earle grew into a major Humber firm that built warships and passenger steamers, and it stayed in business until 1932. The surname itself comes from an Old English word for an earl, but it was a nickname, not a sign of rank.

What does Earle mean?

Earle derives from Old English eorl, the ancestor of "earl". Mark Lower's Patronymica Britannica (1860) says the word first meant a man of valour or consideration, then a leader or ruler, and finally a nobleman of the highest rank. Charles Bardsley's 1901 Dictionary of English and Welsh Surnames classes Earl, Earle and Earll as an official or nickname surname, "the earl", in the same group as Count and Baron (both quoted on britishsurnames.uk). A man called Earle was very unlikely to have held the title. britishsurnames.uk suggests such nicknames might be given to someone who played an earl in a pageant or served in a noble household, and says Earle can also be a place-name surname from hamlets in Northumberland and Yorkshire, but it credits no source for either point, so treat them as possibilities. We have not been able to read the Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland or Reaney and Wilson.

Origin and early records

Bardsley's early examples, all spelled with Erle or Erl rather than Earle, include:

  • Roger le Erle in Cambridgeshire in 1273;
  • Robertus Erle and Thomas Erlle in the Yorkshire poll tax return of 1379;
  • Sarah, daughter of William Earle, baptised at St Mary Aldermary, London, in 1705.

The "le" in the first entry shows it was still a descriptive label ("the earl") in the thirteenth century. Some reference websites give an earlier date, 1095, for a "Lefuin Eorl" at Bury St Edmunds, but we could not confirm that from any published source, so we leave it out.

Spelling variants and related names

  • Earl, Earll: variant spellings in Bardsley's entry.
  • Erle, Erlle, le Erl: medieval forms in the records above.

A surname does not have a single coat of arms; arms belong to particular people and families, and we do not publish any.

How common is Earle?

Earle is far rarer than the big patronymic and occupational names. britishsurnames.uk counts about 3,400 bearers in the UK and ranks it around 2,700th in Britain (the page gives no year for its data). We found no reliable count for Hull or the East Riding, so we do not give one.

Earle in Hull: Earle's Shipbuilding

Wikipedia says the brothers Charles and William Earle founded the yard in Hull in 1845 (Wikipedia). Grace's Guide gives a later date, 1853, for C. and W. Earle, and notes that the company called Earle's Shipbuilding and Engineering Co. was incorporated in 1871, took over the yard of C. and W. Earle and had Sir Edward Reed as chairman (Grace's Guide). The sources therefore disagree on the founding date, and we say only that the firm began in the mid-nineteenth century.

Examples of ships the yard built, according to Wikipedia, include the Chilean ironclad Almirante Cochrane (1874), the steamer Draco (1882) for the Wilson Line, the Royal Navy cruiser HMS Endymion (launched 1891), and the lake steamers Inca (1904) and Ollanta (launched 1931), built to be taken apart and shipped for use on Lake Titicaca in Peru. Grace's Guide describes the yard as building large iron and then steel ships, steamers, ferries and trawlers.

The yard went into voluntary liquidation in 1900. Charles Henry Wilson, the Hull shipowner of the Wilson Line, acquired it afterwards (Wikipedia and Grace's Guide differ between 1900 and 1901) and kept the Earle's name, and Grace's Guide says more than thirty-five ships were then built there for the Wilson Line. In 1932 National Shipbuilders Securities took the yard over as part of a government-backed reduction in shipbuilding capacity, and it closed.

The Hull History Centre holds records of Earle's Shipbuilding and Engineering Co. Ltd and its predecessor C. & W. Earle (reference U DEA, dated 1858 to 1909, two boxes, donated in 1947) at Hull University Archives.

Notable historical bearers with a Hull connection

  • Charles Earle and William Earle, founders of the Hull shipbuilding business that became Earle's. We found no reliable dates for either, so we give none, and we have found no source on where their family came from.

Researching your Earle family in Hull

  • If an ancestor worked at the yard, start with the U DEA records in the Hull History Centre catalogue, and its guides to Apprenticeship Records, Trade Directories and Census Records to find occupations such as riveter, shipwright or boilermaker.
  • For seafaring ancestors, see the Centre's guides to Fishing Crew Lists and Skipper cards, and our piece on Hull's maritime and fishing heritage.
  • Do not assume that everyone called Earle descends from the shipbuilders. The name was a nickname that arose in many places.
  • The East Yorkshire Family History Society runs help desks in Hull and the East Riding.

More surname pages are in our names section.

Sources

  1. britishsurnames.uk, "Earle: as described in historical dictionaries", quoting M. A. Lower (1860) and C. W. Bardsley (1901), britishsurnames.uk/surname/earle/historic (accessed 6 November 2026).
  2. britishsurnames.uk, "Earle", britishsurnames.uk/surname/earle (accessed 6 November 2026).
  3. Wikipedia, "Earle's Shipbuilding", en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earle%27s_Shipbuilding (accessed 6 November 2026).
  4. Grace's Guide, "Earle's Shipbuilding and Engineering Co", gracesguide.co.uk (accessed 6 November 2026).
  5. Hull History Centre catalogue, "Records of Earle's Shipbuilding and Engineering Co. Ltd (and its predecessor C. & W. Earle)" (U DEA), catalogue.hullhistorycentre.org.uk/catalogue/U-DEA (accessed 6 November 2026).
  6. Hull History Centre, family history research guides, hullhistorycentre.org.uk (accessed 6 November 2026).
  7. East Yorkshire Family History Society, eyfhs.org.uk (accessed 6 November 2026).

Last checked 6 November 2026. Spotted an error? Tell us.