This surname is derived from the name of an ancestor. 'the son of Lloyd,' from Ap-Lloyd; compare Bethell, Benyon, Sec. Lloyd is found as Floyd, Flood, and Flud. The patronymic became in a similar way Bloyd, Blood, and Blud. The Manchester Courier, Jan. 8, 1886, describes a trial at the Cheshire Quarter Sessions, in which a woman named Bythell (Ap-lthell) is accused of robbing a fellmonger named Blud (Ap-Llud); compare Bowen or Bevan (Ap-Owen or Ap-Evan).

1741. Married — John Blood and Elizabeth Mann: St. Peter, Cornhill.

1750 — Ralph Walker and Hannah Blood: St. George's Chapel, Mayfair.

The townland of Ballyblood near Tulla, Co. Clare, is named from the Uí Bloid, i.e. descendants of Blod, son of Cas (from whom the collective word Dalcassian was formed). It is a coincidence that the family of Blood, prominent among the gentry of Co. Clare from 1600 to the present time, have for centuries been seated in the heart of the Uí Bloid country, for they have no connextion at all with that group but are on the contrary a family of English extraction, having come to Ireland from Derbyshire about the year 1595. They were soon established in Clare, for one of them was M.P. for Ennis in 1613. A Clare Blood was at Dublin University in 1620. Neptune Blood is recorded as one of the Clare Commissioners for the Poll Money Ordinance of 1661. Many of the family were later named Neptune after him; he is said to be so called because he was born at sea. Records dealing with Clare, e.g. The Inchiquin Manuscripts, have many references to the Blood family from the seventeenth century onwards. There were English Bloods in Ireland before these, but they did not settle here. The notorious Thomas Blood, whose father obtained an estate in Co. Westmeath in 1640, was a nephew of the above mentioned Neptune: though his unsuccessful attempts to assassinate the Duke of Ormond and to steal the crown jewels nearly brought him to the scaffold, he was clever enough to live to enjoy the royal favour and have his estate restored. His son, however, emigrated to America.

A report on the family papers (1640-1845) is in the National Library of Ireland.

. Usually considered to be a contraction of a presumed Welsh ab-Lloyd, ab-Llwyd [Welsh ab, son], but this is very doubtful. Perhaps an English oath-name or nick­name [Old English blód, blood]: cp. the phrase 'a young blood.’

Though settled in the Uí Bloid country in Co.

Clare the Bloods are not of Gaelic origin: they came from Derbyshire, England, in 1595. SIF 18

(Welsh) The son of Lloyd (gray).

Ole Norse, blaudr, bashful, timid. Ferguson.

In the Dutch, signifies timorous, cowardly; a simpleton. Lower informs us that Godkin, Blood (S'blood), and Sacre, may be regarded as clipped oaths, and given as names to the persons in the habit of using them; and that in the neighborhood of a fashionable square in London, are now living surgeons whose names are Churchyard, Death, Blood, and Slaughter.

Ferguson derives this name from Old Norse blaudr, bashful, timid. It may be the same name as Lloyd, Floyd, from W. llwyd, brown, grey. The name of General Blood ap­peared in Sporting Life in January, 1867.