The origin that currently has the most weight is that the name LINDARS is of Swedish descent, or certainly of Scandinavian origin.   Several Swedish sources have independently told me that LINDARS is a Swedish surname.    As you will see, we can trace at least one LYNDERS back to Oxfordshire in around 1590.      This would be a bit late to be Viking, but would more probably be an immigrant from sometime during the 16^th Century, who settled in Chipping Norton on the edge of the Cotswolds.     It would be nice to be able to find a record of this move, perhaps in all the ships’ logs which are held at the Public Record Office in Kew.

One problem for tracking the LINDARS name is that before the 17^th Century, people generally did not have surnames.    The average person called John would be known as John of Gloucester, because he came from Gloucester or John Smith, for obvious reasons.   The other problem was that until well into the 18^th Century few people could write, except for the clergymen.    So few people cared how their name was spelt.    An example of this is a during a 25 year period in the 19^th Century in the Tetsworth parish records, when all the LINDARS are called LINDEARS. That is purely because that parson or scribe had decided that that was how the name was spelt.    After he left, it reverted back to LINDARS, within the same register.    For anyone speculating that the name changes are in fact different families, it does clearly show in the parish registers that the same person can have a different spelling as their life goes on.    It just depended on the author.

Having said this, there are some trends that we can look at more generally.    The earliest records talk of several LYNDERS.   By 1700 or so, this changed into LINDERS and LINDARS.    As the records before 1800 are purely parish and hence county based, my research has been limited to a few key areas (Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Norfolk).    There are in the world a slightly larger number of LINDERS, both in the UK and USA, probably originating from in or around Norfolk.    I would guess that our Swedish ancestor arrived somewhere on the coast of Norfolk around 1500.    He and his family probably stayed there for at least a couple of generation, then a William Lynders moved to Oxfordshire.    Judging from the numbers of people left to pass on the name, at least a few LINDERS stayed in Norfolk and created the LINDERS population in England and the US today.

As for where the name itself came from, I will pass on a couple of theories that I heard from a Belgian colleague called Albert LINDEERS.   Firstly Albert agreed that our common name was from Sweden, his family originally came from Denmark and are presumed to have moved down from the North.   He offered two possible derivations, both of which are suitably full of heritage and tradition. I personally love the second of these two.

• That LINDERS or LINDARS is a derivation of the Scandinavian name for the leader of the community, group or village.   A Lindars would be hereditary chief, passing leadership on from one generation to another.   Hence the LINDARSes or LINDERSes are all descendants of Scandinavian Viking leaders.

• The next somewhat romantic derivation goes something like this.  My name is Lindars, Lynders or Lyndars and so was my father’s.   In Sweden everyone is named after their father and is called someone’s son. E.g. Eric Ericsson or perhaps : Lindar Lindarsson.