Smith, one of the oldest and most wide-spread of English family names, not to be regarded as belonging to one but to very many distinct families. It is, of course, derived from the honourable trade of the smith; the smith being originally a worker in metal or wood, and so nearly equivalent (when not compounded as in goldsmith, locksmith, arrow-smith) to 'craftsman or 'artificer.' At first the name was not hereditary, but was used as a description of the individual: in the 14th century we have John Smyth, son of Thomas Wright (John being a smith and Thomas a carpenter); John's son might be called William Smythson, and his daughter Mary Smythdoghter. But soon the name became purely hereditary; and it is obvious that there would be many founders of Smith families. Philip le Smethe, William le Smyt, Henry le Smeyt show ancient forms of the name; Smyth, Smythe, and Smijth (derived from a form with a dotted , Smyth) are also old variants which still survive. Smithson, Smithman, Brownsmith, Redesmith, Nasmyth (= Nailsmith), &c. are derivative forms. Corresponding in meaning is the Latin Faber; French, Le Ferre, Lefevre, or Lefebvre; Italian, Fabroni; German, Schmidt; Dutch, Smid and Smits. The Celtic Caird and Gow are nearly equivalent. The English names Ferrier, Ferrers, Ferrars are from the Latin Ferrarius, 'farrier' or 'shoeshmith.' See NAMES.
In the London directory the Smiths fill eight pages (averaging 200 entries) of the commercial section (as against four pages of Joneses, and four of Browns), and three in the Court directory—not all undistinguished. Sir Hugh Smithson, who married the heiress of the Percies (q.v.), was created Duke of Northumberland in 1776; the
Viscounts Straugford were Smythes; and the widow of the Right Hon. William Henry Smith (q.v.) was in 1891 made Viscountess Hambleden. And there were in 1892 six baronets and twenty-four knights bearing the name of Smith (in its several spellings); and sixty entries in the index of Burke's Peerage testify to the aristocratic connections of the Smiths. There is a work by H. S. Grazebrook on The Heraldry of Smith (1870); and by F. M. Smith on The Heraldry of Smith in Scotland (1873). In English literature they constitute a mighty army: Allibone's Dictionary of British and American Authors, with its supplement (1891), enumerates no less than 1069 several and distinct authors of the name of Smith (seventy-five of them William Smith), without counting Smyths, &c. The editor of the Dictionary of American Biography has thought no less than 199 persons of the name worthy of notice in that work. To such exhaustiveness the present work cannot pretend; but besides the subjects of the 18 articles below, we add a list of 22 Smiths whose names are more or less familiar in philanthropy, literature, science, or art.
Anker Smith, engraver (1759-1819); Charles Roach Smith, antiquary (1807-90); Charlotte Smith, poet and novelist (1749-1806); Eli Smith, American missionary to Syria (1801-57); Sir Francis Pettit Smith, mechanical inventor (1808-74; see p. 404); George Smith, of Chichester, landscape-painter (1713-76); Gerrit Smith, American philanthropist (1797-1874); Henry Boynton Smith, D.D., American Presbyterian divine (1815-77); James Smith of Deanston, Scottish agriculturist (1789-1850); Sir James Edward Smith, botanist (1759-1828); John Smith, mezzotint engraver (1652-1742); John Raphael Smith, painter and mezzotinter (1750-1812); John Pye Smith, D.D., LL.D., divine and geologist (1774-1851); John Stafford Smith, composer (1750-1836); Robert Angus Smith, Scottish chemist and hygienist, author of Air and Rain, &c. (1817-84); Robert Archibald Smith, composer of Scotch songs and psalm-tunes (1780-1829); Very Rev. Robert Payne Smith, Dean of Canterbury, orientalist and divine, Bampton Lecturer on Prophecy (1819-95); Sir Thomas Smith, Elizabethan statesman and scholar, author of De Republica Anglorum (1514-77); Thomas Smith, of Derby, painter (c. 1709-67); Thomas Southwood Smith, M.D., hygienist, author of Philosophy of Health and Epidemics (1788-1861); William Henry Smith, author of the philosophical novels Thorndale and Gravenhurst (1808-72); also Charles Piazza Smyth, ex-astronomer-royal for Scotland (1819-1900).