FITZ. Occurs at the present day as a surname without any addition. This is prohablv local, from the parish of Fitz in Shropshire ; or it may he the Xorman-Fr., Le Fitz, " the Son "—like Cousin, Frere, Brother, &c. Fiz. H.R. |°FITZ. A Norman-French prefix, signifying son, being a corruption of the 'LaimfiUns. Many of the names which occur in Domesday Book v;\i\ijilhis and the father's name in the genitive case, become Fitz in later records. Like AP among the Welsh, and MAC among the Scotch, the Fitz prefixed to the father's name was the only surname in use in many noble families, thus: 1. Bardolf; 2. AkarisFitz-Bardolf; 3. HerveyFitzAkaris ; 4. Henry Fitz-Hervey ; 5. Randolph Fitz-Henry, and so on, down to the time of Edw" III. This succession is found in the family known as FitzHugh, which then became their permanent surname. In general, howe-\-er, this patronymical method was disused at an earlier period. Camden informs us that " King Edward the First, disliking the iteration of Fitz, commanded the Lord John Fitz-Robert, an ancient baron (whose ancestours had continued their surnames by their fathers' Christian names) to leave that manner, and be called John of Claveriug, which was the capital seat of his Barony. And in this time many that had followed this course of naming by Fitz, took them one settled name and retained it." Remains, p. 185. The origin of the word FiTZ, which has so much puzzled some Antiquaries, is this : in coutracting the word fiUus, our old scribes drew a stroke across the '1,' to denote the omission of the following ' i,' and thus assimilated it in form to the letter 't.' The character ' z ' is the usual contraction of ' us.' Thus the word looked like "fz," and came to be so pronounced. FITZ-CLARENCE. This siu-name was given to the natural children of the late Duke of Clarence, afterwards King William IV. FITZ-ELLTS. The knightly family so named, who flourished at'Waterpyrie near Oxford, sprang from Sir William Alis mentioned in Domesd. The forms are FitzElys, Fitz-Elias, Fitz-Ellis, &c. See Ellis.

Lower, Mark A (1860) Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom. London: J.R. Smith. Public Domain.