I have noticed that “Naylor” seems to be a popular name in this area. There is a Naylor Street and a Naylor Place in Alexandria. In the District there is a Naylor Road SE and Naylor Gardens Apartments. There is a Naylor Road station in the Metro system. Who is Naylor? Or are there lots of Naylors?

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       — Diane Steele, Alexandria

       There are a lot of Naylors in this area. Most of them are descendants of the first Naylor — at least the first one to arrive in Maryland. That was George Nailor, a.k.a., George the immigrant, born in Yorkshire in 1655.

       George’s story — and the story of many of the Naylors who issued from his loins — is told in “The Naylors of Woodborough,” a meticulously researched book published in 2013. It’s the work of Joseph Y. Rowe, along with fellow descendants Debra Naylor, Ruth Naylor, Brenda Ramsey and Franklin A. Robinson Jr.

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       “For years, we were curious about [Naylor Road SE] and wondered if there was a connection to our ancestors,” wrote Debra Naylor, George’s great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter in an email to Answer Man. “It’s nice to have the mystery solved.”

       To start at the very beginning: In Yorkshire, the earliest mention of the surname Nailor (actually, le Nayler) pops up in the 13th century. No surprise, it was the name of a man who made nails. It’s likely that George the immigrant’s father, James, worked in the Yorkshire wool trade. As for George, he left home in 1668 at the age of 12 or 13, destined for St. Clement’s Island on the lower Potomac in Maryland.

       George’s move was paid for by an earlier English settler named Henry Cole. Men such as Cole could receive 50 acres of land in Maryland for each immigrant they sponsored. When these indentured servants finished their service, they were eligible for 50 acres of their own.

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       George the immigrant eventually acquired a farm named Woodborough near the Patuxent River in what is today Prince George’s County. He had a daughter, Elizabeth, and two sons: George and James. He died in 1734.

       As for the disparities in the family name, Debra Naylor wrote: “At the time of George’s immigration, there was still a lax attitude to the spelling of names.”

       George, one of his sons and a grandson all tended to use “Nailor” or “Nailer.” Others preferred “Naylor.”

       Wrote Debra: “Clerks often spelled names phonetically. When spelling became standardized, ‘Naylor’ became the standard.”

       The Naylors who farmed in Southern Maryland primarily grew tobacco. They depended upon the unpaid labor of enslaved people. Naylors in Maryland and in the District would own enslaved people up to the Civil War.

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       Sometime in the 1790s, John Lawson Naylor, George’s great-grandson, moved to a farm on the Eastern Branch of the Potomac. By 1802, he had taken over the operation of a ferry that crossed the Eastern Branch — what we today call the Anacostia River. The northern terminus of today’s Naylor Road SE is about where the ferry dock was.

       “It was not unusual for roads to be named after folks who owned the land nearby — so it may have been named as early as John Lawson Naylor’s time,” Debra Naylor wrote. “It was also not unusual for roads leading to a ferry to be named after the ferry/owner/operator — though perhaps it would have been named ‘Naylor’s Ferry Road’ in that case.”

       The Naylor name was perpetuated in that area by John Lawson Naylor’s son Henry (1799-1871), who built a house called Mount Henry.

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       “From what I have gathered, the house may have been in the path of Pennsylvania Avenue as it goes up the hill to Branch Avenue and hence was destroyed during development,” wrote Franklin A. Robinson Jr. in an email to Answer Man.

       The Naylor name would be attached to a road, an apartment complex and a movie theater.

       And what of Alexandria’s Naylor Street and Naylor Place? The authors of “The Naylors of Woodborough” found no connection between their family and the Virginia port.

       The Alexandria streets are in Seminary Valley, a 1950s development bounded by Interstate 395, North Jordan Street, Duke Street and Polk Avenue. According to a 1952 Washington Post story, when the area was annexed by the city it was decided that east-west streets there would be named after prominent figures from American history, which explains Polk Avenue and Taney Avenue. North-south streets would be named after Confederate generals.

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       That works for Pickett Street and Pegram Street — George Pickett and John Pegram, respectively — but Answer Man couldn’t find a Confederate general named Naylor.

       The streets there are alphabetical. Perhaps town planners were simply looking for a name beginning with N.

       Question time

       Do you know which Naylor is the namesake for Alexandria’s Naylor Street? Or do you have a question about something else in the Washington area? Direct your query to answerman@washpost.com.

       Read more from John Kelly.