Not surprisingly, the surname Miller was originally an occupational name-for one who grinds (or mills) the corn. The earliest forms of this name are Mulnare (1275), Milner and Mylnere.

The original Milner, or Miller, has many related names. Common examples of these are Millward (the ward or keeper of the mill), Milne (usually meaning ‘dweller, or worker at the mill’), Millers (a derivative of Miller) and Millman.

There are also a number of names which would at first sight appear to be related to Miller, but come from completely different sources. Examples of these are Millican, Millikin (which derive from Milligan, which in turn comes from the Irish name Mulligan), and Millicent (which originates from a German first name meaning ‘work-strong’ and which came over to England with the Norman Conquest). Interestingly, Molineux, which looks at first sight to be from a different source, is a French name meaning ‘miller’ and is ultimately related to Miller by etymology.

The popular and widespread name Mills has two possible derivations, one of which is related to Miller. On the one hand it could be from ‘dweller by the mills’ (plural); on the other it could represent the first name Miles (now more common as Myles).

Owing to its early rural origins, the name Miller is extremely widespread, being one of the few English names which is common to all counties throughout the land. It is also the twentieth most popular Scottish name and, more surprisingly, was recently found to be sixth most popular in the United States-though many of these will have been anglicised from European versions of this occupational name or from similar-sounding more complex European names, or simply adopted by people whose names proved too long and/or too complex for everyday English use-as in many Polish or Greek names.

The name Miller began to appear early in the English records-though its earliest appearance was in a variation of the original Milner form. One John le Mulnare is mentioned in the Subsidy Rolls for Worcester for 1275. Only 21 years later the Miller form appeared in the Subsidy Rolls for Sussex, where one Ralf Muller is listed.

Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot are the creations of Agatha Mary Miller (1891—1976), better known as Agatha Christie. Worldwide sales of her 77 detective novels are in the tens of millions. Dame Agatha is unique in being the only modern playwright to have had three West End plays running concurrently, including The Mousetrap which has run for a record-breaking 28 years.

Other Millers have also been notably successful as twentieth- century literary figures. Henry Miller (1891—1980) is famous for his sexually explicit novels Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn, written and published in Paris and banned in the UK and US until the early Sixties. Arthur Miller (b.l915) is a major American dramatist whose best-known work Death of A Salesman won a 1949 Pulitzer Prize.

Famous English comedian Joseph Miller (1684—1738) was ironically dubbed ‘The Father of Jests’, since he was something of a dullard and the butt of contemporary jesters. A ‘Joe Miller’ was a popular nineteenth-century term synonymous with any joke, as in ‘I don’t see the Joe Miller of it’.

The most popular Allied band leader during World War II was Glenn Miller (1904—44). The plane carrying him to entertain the troops at Christmas-time vanished over the sea and was never found. The ‘Glenn Miller sound’ goes on to this very day.

The United Kingdom has towns named Miller, Mill and Miller’s Dale, South Africa has a Miller and Australia a Millaroo. The United States has 6 name-related towns while the Bahamas has a town called Millars and New Zealand has Miller’s Flat and Millerton. Surprisingly few major rivers bear the name. Australia has a Miller river and a Miller’s creek while the United States has a Millers falls.

With about 21,000 namesakes Miller is Scotland’s 20th most popular surname. Thus about one out of every 240 Scots is named Miller. (The name is not common enough throughout England and Wales to be counted separately.) Miller is notably popular in and around Glasgow where an estimated one in about 206 families bears the name, and in Edinburgh where the figure is about one in 270. Around the world Millers are most common in Vancouver (one in 461 families), Canberra (one in 548), Toronto (one in 575) and Melbourne (one in 622). The United States has more Millers than the entire population of Birmingham-an estimated total of just over 1,190,000 makes this their 6th most popular surname.