The Story Behind Our Name

Our father/grandfather John ffrench was the patriarch of the ffrench family.  He and our mother/grandmother Primm established The Dolphin Studio in 1973.  We are often asked where our business name came from, so I decided to write this blog post!

The ffrench family crest is a dolphin, which in myth and legend represents “friend of man”.  In the 15th century the ffrench family prospered through trade links with Europe and across the ocean in the West Indies. The fact that they were mariners surely led to the use of the dolphin as the family crest, as it is a long-standing heraldic symbol with deep historical roots. 

Not only is our name, The Dolphin Studio, inspired by the dolphin from the original crest, but so is our logo. John took the dolphin that is in our original crest and turned it into the dolphin you see today, which you can compare in the photos below. 

Ancestrally, the ffrench family is one of the historic “14 Tribes of Galway,” an ancient family which originally arrived in Ireland with the Anglo-Normans in the 12th century. While other ffrench branches conformed to the Protestant faith and then modernized the spelling of their name by using a capital "F" rather than the antiquated double lowercase "f"s, the ffrenches of Castle ffrench, John ffrench’s branch of the family, remained Catholic and kept the name as it was.

So there you have it! The history of our logo and our name--it's not a spelling error!