From Whence Hails Huhne ?

Everyone knows about Lib Dem Lembit Opik’s Estonian heritage, featuring astronomer and meteor guru Ernst Opik - not to mention great-uncle Oskar sieg-heiling through WW2 as a senior member of the puppet Estonian government set up when the Germans arrived.

But Chris Huhne is a bit of a mystery man out of nowhere. Nothing about his parents on wikipedia or any other bio that I’ve seen. Most politicians are only too pleased to tell you about how they got all their values from great-aunt Gertie. Where's the hinterland ? (Lib dem leader and fellow Westminster old boy Nick Clegg has an interesting background too).

Huhne is a pretty unusual surname in the UK – according to the National Trust names site (which shows the geographical distribution of UK surnames) there were fewer than 100 Huhnes on the 1998 electoral register. The FreeBMD genealogy site (which isn't a complete record) shows only two male Huhnes born in the UK between 1837 and 1983 - Paul Harry Huhne in St Pancras in 1903 and Peter I Huhne (with an umlaut) to Harry P and Mrs Huhne (nee Hancock) in Hendon in June 1926. There aren't even very many in Germany - Huhne does have a bit of a Teutonic ring to it.

Whence do his forebears spring ? Or did he just leap into existence fully-formed ?

(Update - maybe the Huhnes are related to the Hoons - perhaps this one)

Update 2 - everything.com :

Christopher Murray Paul Huhne was born on the 2nd July 1954, although strangely enough, Huhne appears to be somewhat circumspect about his family origins. As far as can be ascertained he was born Paul-Huhne, which was certainly the surname he was known under at Westminster School, and the one under which he appeared when his demyship at Magdalene was announced in The Times in 1971. Understandably for someone who was later active in the Labour Party, he then seems to have dropped the double barrelled 'Paul-Huhne' in favour of plain 'Huhne'.

His father Peter Ivor Paul-Huhne was a businessman who, although originally a Conservative, became interested in Liberal politics as a consequence of the invasion of Suez in 1956, and married a Margaret Ann Murray of Toronto, and was himself the only son of Mr H Paul-Huhne who ran the British Electrical Resistance Company for many years and also married a Canadian from Toronto. His mother was an actress known under the name of Ann Murray, the high point of whose career appeared to be an appearance as the 'motorist' in the UK made Psychomania (1973). Chris Huhne himself once claimed that she played Clark Kent's mother in one of the Superman movies, but this claim appears to be nothing more than a figment of Huhne's imagination.