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PIPES Family History

This interesting and unusual surname has two origins; firstly, it may be a metonymic occupational name for a piper, deriving from the Olde English pre 7th Century "pipe" meaning pipe. The Olde English "pipe" was also used for a water-pipe, conduit or aqueduct, and of the channel of a small stream; the name may thus be a topographical name from residence near such a pipe, or a locational name from Pipe in Herefordshire (where there is a brook), and Pipe near Lichfield, in Staffordshire (where there are springs from which water has for centuries been piped to Lichfield).