Origins - Bowes and Bowe in England and Ireland
As far as we know, the Bowes surname has two main origins, one in England, the other Ireland, discussed in their own sections. It has an ancient history in both places.
Despite the proximity of their geographic origins in northern England, according to the publisher of The Yorkshire Bowe Site who has done extensive documentary research into English Bowe, English Bowe have a different surname origin than English Bowes. This conclusion based on documentary research should be confirmed using DNA evidence.
Ironically though, the Irish Bowes origin relates to its evolution in Ireland from Boe/Bowe. Having established that some Irish Boe/Bowe/s have Irish genetic origins, English Boe/Bowe was apparently used to anglicize an old Gaelic name which sounded the same or similar. So in Ireland Bowes is a later variant of Boe/Bowe, while it is not connected to Bowes of England. Of course there are possibly people by the last name Bowes who emigrated to Ireland from England.
Origins - Bowes, Buoy, Boe and others from Scotland
There are also possible separate Scottish [to come] origins to the Bowes and some variants surnames.
Origins - Bowe in other countries
In addition to the more widely thought of English origins of the Bowe surname, there are some lineages bearing the name that acquired it elsewhere. For instance there are accounts of phonetic variations of this name coming from Norway (with Norwegian roots) and Germany (original roots unknown). Our project aims to help each lineage researcher determine their origin, whether it coincides with the two main lineage origins of the surname(s) or is more unique.