My surname's variations Hargreave, Hargreaves, Hargrave, Hargraves,
Hargrove, etc existed in England well back into Roman times.  You can fill
volumes with fact and speculation about how these names and variations came
to be.

My given name, Bevard, has a more specific recent history.  'Bevard' is an
anglicized version of a French Huguenot surname: Beauvert.  They were
successful farmers in southern France.  By the 1500's, these folks were
growing flax and producing linen and lace.  After narrowly escaping a
genocide against Protestants in France in 1572, they moved to Scotland for
awhile but found it poorly suited to the flax, linen, and lace industry they
were proficient at.

In 1574, they relocated their linen and lace production to northern Ireland
where the land and climate proved to be better suited to flax farming.
Beauvert evolved to Bovairt, to Bevairt, to Bovard, and to Bevard.  A person
of Beauvert ancestry, James Bevard, was called by King James I in 1603 and
served at Hampton Court Palace from 1604 until 1611 on the commission that
revised the Bishop's Bible and published the King James Edition in 1611.

Some of these Bevard's migrated to North America in the 1700's. At first
glance the Bevard lines in North America appear to be part of the great Irish
immigration to North America.  But in this instance, there is a bit more to
the story.