Avery (surname)
Appearance
Avery is an English surname of ambiguous or multiple origins. Some scholars believe that the name is of Anglo-Norman origin and derived from "Every" or "Evreux". The name may have arrived in England after the Norman Conquest. It is the name of a county in Normandy. It can also be found in the northern Spanish region of Navarra, where the House of Évreux was a ruling royal house from 1328 to 1441. At the time,[1] the name's frequency was highest in Devon (5.9 times the British average), followed by Sussex, Buckinghamshire, Rutland, Worcestershire, Oxfordshire, Kent, Warwickshire, Cornwall and Somerset.
Notable people with the surname include:
Activism
- Byllye Avery, American health care activist
- Greg Avery, British animal rights activist
- Rachel Foster Avery, 19th century American suffragist
Law and politics
- Bill Avery (born 1940), Nebraska politician and professor
- Brian Avery (activist), former volunteer for the International Solidarity Movement
- Carlos Avery (1868–1930), Minnesota newspaper publisher and politician
- Ephraim Kingsbury Avery, Methodist minister accused of an 1832 murder
- Isaac E. Avery, Colonel in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War
- Jack Avery (lawyer), former Attorney General of Guam
- James Avery (American colonist) (1620–1700), Connecticut colonist, legislator, and military commander
- John Avery (politician), physician and politician from Michigan
- John Keith Avery, former commissioner of the New South Wales police
- Steven Avery, American exonerated by DNA evidence for a crime
- Waightstill Avery, North Carolina's first attorney general and a colonel during the American Revolutionary War
- William H. Avery (politician) (1911–2009), former governor of Kansas
- William Tecumsah Avery (1819–1880), former member of the United States House of Representatives
Literature
- Catharine Hitchcock Tilden Avery (1844-1911), American author, editor, educator
- Fiona Avery, comic book and television writer
- George Avery, American professor of German Studies
- Gillian Avery, British children’s writer and scholar
- Harold Avery, British author of children's literature
- Tom Avery, explorer, mountaineer, author, and motivational speaker
- Valeen Tippetts Avery, American biographer and historian
Performance and music
- Brad Avery (Third Day Band Member), guitarist for the rock band, Third Day
- Eric Avery, original bass player for Jane's Addiction
- James Avery (actor) (1945–2013), American actor known for playing "Uncle Phil" on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
- James Avery (musician) (1937–2009), American and German pianist and conductor
- Margaret Avery, American singer and actress
- Patricia Avery (1902–1973), American silent film actress
- Phyllis Avery, American actress
- Shondrella Avery, American actress
- Stephen Morehouse Avery, screenwriter
Science and engineering
- Clarence W. Avery, engineer at Ford Motor Company
- John Scales Avery, theoretical chemist and peace activist
- Oswald Avery, physician and scientist
- William H. Avery (engineer), aeronautics engineer
Sports
- Albert Avery, English rugby league footballer
- Genard Avery (born 1995), American football player
- George Avery Young (1866–1900), English sportsman who played rugby and cricket
- Gordon George Avery (1925–2006), Australian track and field athlete
- James Avery (baseball) (born 1984) Canadian baseball player
- Jim Avery (born 1944), American football player
- John Avery (Canadian football), professional Canadian football player
- Ryan Avery (lacrosse), former professional lacrosse player
- Sean Avery, professional hockey player
- Steve Avery, former Major League Baseball pitcher
- William Avery (basketball), professional basketball player
- Xavier Avery (born 1990), American baseball player
Visual arts
- Milton Avery, American Modernist painter
- Tex Avery, animator and director; creator of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck
Other
- Bryan Avery, British architect
- Cyrus Avery, American highway commissioner
- Henry Every (or Avery), 17th century pirate
- James Avery (Medal of Honor), (1825–1898) Union Navy seaman and recipient of the Medal of Honor during the American Civil War
- Peter Avery, Fellow of King's College, Cambridge
- R. Stanton Avery, founder of Avery Dennison Corporation and namesake of Caltech's Avery House
- Sewell Avery, U.S. businessman
- Sir William Beilby Avery (1854–1908), philatelist
Fictional characters
- Avery, a minor Death Eater in the Harry Potter series
- Bree Avery, protagonist of the lonelygirl15 Internet video series
- Rupert Avery, a main character in The Serpentwar Saga
- Shug Avery, one of the main characters in the 1983 novel The Color Purple
See also
- Averin (surname) (Аверины), a Russian surname
- Every (surname)
- James Avery Craftsman, an American jeweler
References
- ^ "Avery Meaning and Distribution". forebears.co.uk. Retrieved 25 January 2014