Taliaferro
Taliaferro, also spelled Talliaferro, Tagliaferro, Talifero, or Taliferro and sometimes anglicised to Tellifero, Tolliver or Toliver, is a prominent family in eastern Virginia and Maryland. The Taliaferros are one of the early families who settled in Virginia in the 17th century. They migrated from London, where an ancestor had served as a musician in the court of Queen Elizabeth I. The surname in that line is believed to trace back to Bartholomew Taliaferro, a native of Venice who settled in London and was made a denizen in 1562.
. Sketch sent from Thomas Jefferson to George Wythe, 1786
The origins of the Taliaferro name were of interest to George Wythe, a Virginia colonial lawyer and classical scholar, who had married Elizabeth Taliaferro, the daughter of Richard Taliaferro. Wythe urged his former student and friend Thomas Jefferson to investigate the name when Jefferson traveled to Italy. Jefferson later reported to Wythe that he had found two families of the name in Tuscany, and that the family was of Italian origin. Jefferson enclosed his sketch of the coat of arms of the Tagliaferro family as reported to him by a friend in Florence, Italy.
Etymology
Unknown to Jefferson, Taliaferro appears to arise due to a transcription error and a variation of the Italian surname Tagliaferri, which is, even today, widespread in Italy especially in Lombardy, but it also has representation in the Bolognese, Florentine, Lazio and Neapolitan regions. The name Tagliaferro, less common, has families in Vicenza, Gorizia, in the province of Rome and in Campania. A slight variation, Tagliafierro, is also typical of the Campania region, Caserta in particular.From the etymological point of view, the term tagliaferro indicates a soldier skilled in piercing the opponent or the shield of the adversary with his weapons, which cleave/slice medieval armor, such as with a stroke of ax or sword. In reality, these surnames may also derive from the medieval name Tagliaferro, that is, the Italianization of the French name Taillefer, made famous by the chivalric epic.
People with the name
Given name
It is the first name of the following persons:- Toliver Craig, Jr., representative in the Kentucky General Assembly
- Toliver Craig, Sr., 18th-century frontiersman and militia officer
- Taliaferro Sidney Evans, Major, 11th Mississippi Regiment, CSA: died in the Cornfield Charge at Sharpsburg, 17 Sept. 1862.
- Taliaferro Preston Shaffner, 19th-century self-proclaimed colonel, inventor and publisher.
Middle name
- William Close, late surgeon who worked in Africa, father of actress Glenn Close
- Robert M. T. Hunter, U.S. Senator and Confederate Secretary of State
- Booker T. Jones, musician, composer, frontman for Booker T. and the MGs
- Sam Rayburn, 20th-century Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives
- John T. Thompson, early 20th-century U.S. Army officer who invented Thompson submachine gun
- Booker T. Washington, postbellum African-American political leader, educator, orator, author, and ex-slave
Surname
Taliaferro
- Adam Taliaferro, college football player severely injured during a game
- Al Taliaferro, comic-strip artist
- Benjamin Taliaferro, early 19th-century U.S. Representative from Georgia
- Chris Taliaferro, Chicago alderman
- Edith Taliaferro, actress
- George Taliaferro, NFL player
- Gabriëlle Andrée Iglesias Velayos y Taliaferro, garden designer and landscape architect
- Hardin E. Taliaferro, humorist and Baptist preacher
- James Taliaferro, early 20th-century U.S. Senator from Florida
- John Taliaferro, antebellum U.S. Representative from Virginia
- Lawrence Taliaferro, United States frontier agent
- Lorenzo Taliaferro, former running back for the Baltimore Ravens
- Mabel Taliaferro, actress
- Ray Taliaferro, radio host
- Richard Taliaferro, colonial architect in Williamsburg, Virginia
- R. Catesby Taliaferro, philosopher and mathematician
- Walter R. Taliaferro, pioneer U.S. Army aviator
- William B. Taliaferro, Confederate States of America general
Toliver
- Kay Toliver, teacher
Tolliver
- Anthony Tolliver, basketball player
- Billy Joe Tolliver, football player
- Charles Tolliver, musician and composer
- Lisa Tolliver, American academic-practitioner and media personality
- Melba Tolliver, journalist
- Mose Tolliver, primitive artist
- David Tolliver, singer/songwriter/producer
Places
- Camp Taliaferro, San Diego, CA, Named for US Army pilot Walter R. Taliaferro
- Camp Taliaferro, Texas, United States, named for Walter R. Taliaferro
- T. C. Taliaferro House, Florida, United States
- Taliaferro County, Georgia, United States, named for Benjamin Taliaferro
- Taliaferro Hall, College of William and Mary, Virginia, United States
- Taliaferro Hall, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, United States, Named for Thomas Hardy Taliaferro. Dean/College of Engineering; Dean/College of Arts and Sciences
Fictional characters
Tulliver
- Maggie Tulliver, in George Eliot's classic novel, "The Mill on the Floss", a dark-complexioned miller's daughter
Tagliaferro
- Roy Tagliaferro, an alias of the serial killer Red John, in The Mentalist
Taliaferro
- Paul Taliaferro, a character in David Weber and Steve White's science-fiction novel The Shiva Option
- Peachey Taliaferro Carnehan, a character in Rudyard Kipling's short story "The Man Who Would Be King"
- Penelope Taliaferro Russell, secretary to John Joseph Bonforte in Robert A. Heinlein's Double Star
- Roderick Taliaferro, the title character in George Cram Cook's first novel, Roderick Taliaferro: A Story of Maximilian's Empire, with illustrations by Seymour M. Stone
Tolliver
- Tolliver Groat, Junior Postman, later Senior Postman and Postal Inspector in Ankh-Morpork, the fictional capital of Discworld
- Tolliver Lang, the stepbrother of the protagonist of The Harper Connelly Mysteries
- Ben Tolliver, a recurring character in the Gunsmoke radio and television series and the protagonist of the episode, "Ben Tolliver's Stud"
- Crane Tolliver, a character played by Wiley Harker on the ABC soap opera General Hospital
- Cy Tolliver, a character played by Powers Boothe on HBO's Deadwood TV series
- Jeffrey Tolliver, a recurring character in crime writer Karin Slaughter's Grant County series
- June Tolliver, the "girl" in John Fox, Jr.'s romance/Western novel, The Trail of the Lonesome Pine
- Lorenzo "Guts" Tolliver, protagonist of Jabari Asim's novel Only the Strong
- Michael Tolliver, a gardener, who is a recurring character in Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City series
- Morton Tolliver, a character in Christopher Kenworthy's Dead or Alive: A Wild West Omnibus novel, of the Western Adventure Omnibus
- Pendleton Tolliver, a fictional character in Ted Bell's short story "The Powder Monkey", compiled in the anthology Thriller: Stories to Keep You Up All Night
- Steven Tolliver, owner of a sailing ship line in Cecil B. DeMille's film Reap the Wild Wind
- Toby Tolliver, a character in early 20th-century American theatrical tent shows
- Gregory Tolliver, presumed leader of movement in northern California known as L.O.A.