Recorded in several forms including Tregea, Tregear and Tregay., this is an English surname. It originates from the county of Cornwall and derives from "Tregear", of which there various places so named. The translation is "the village of the fort", derived from the Old Cornish and Celtic words "Tre" or "Trev", meaning "hamlet, village, or settlement", with "caer", as in the Welsh language, meaning fort or castle. Locational names were usually given in the first instance to the local lord of the manor, and later to those who left their original homes and went to live or work in another area. One of the easiest methods of identification was to call a person by the name of his or sometimes her, original homestead. Spelling being at best erratic and local dialects very thick, soon lead to the development of "sounds like" spellings. In this case examples of recordings include Phillip Tregea who married Constance Knight on the 5th January 1655 in Truro, Cornwall, whilst George Tregay was christened on the 29th June 1747 at the church of St. John the Baptist, in the city of London. The first recorded spelling of the family name may be that of William Tregea, which was dated 1st December 1653, at St. Agnes, near Truro, during the period of "The Commonwealth", 1649 - 1658. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.

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