Back in the Middle Ages when surnames were becoming more necessary, some lucky person was living near a ’butere feld’ – ancient words which translate as ‘the open space where cows who give butter graze’. Since 2008 I have written a short column for Down Your Way magazine in which I look at the origin of surnames. BOOCOCK The surname may sometimes have been acquired by someone who had acted as the personification of Truth in a mystery play or pageant. They might have gained the nickname through acting lordly, or by being elected as a ‘Lord of Misrule’, a medieval Yuletide custom which lasted several centuries, or after being appointed as ‘Lord of the Harvest’ – someone who was responsible for employing his harvest workers. Before anyone called Thewlis slinks away hanging their head in shame … we have to be careful when we talk of nicknames, because back in the Middle Ages our sense of humour was different from today, and often a person was given a nickname because they were actually the total opposite of the usual meaning – a kind of sarcasm of the time. In these cases, the origin would have nothing to do with a place but of some kind of description or nickname for the original bearer of the name. This family’s name certainly appears in early documents as Walton – and Wanton – but as the Wauton spelling still existed in fifteenth-century papers then it is unlikely that today’s Waltons are descended from Sir John’s line. This was once an occupational name for a female dyer of cloth. Google is late to the game with its Home Hub, but the low price and AI features make it a great choice for controlling your home, showing pictures and even helping run your life. It is thought that this led to the Benn surname. Often, names ending -er indicate an occupation – such as carpenter or weaver. The name Alderson has been uncovered in Lancashire in the 13th century while in February 1545 Gabrell Alderson married Agnes Garnet in Eaglescliffe, Durham. The surname has taken on many forms from Macilvernock to the Old Gaelic ‘MacGilleMhearnaig’ which literally translated means ‘son of the follower of Saint Mearnag’. But most of today’s Armitages can be traced back to a family living at Armitage Bridge, near Huddersfield, way back in the fourteenth century. For example, there’s a Leeds marriage in 1579 for Abraham Fawber, but seven years later the same man is described as Abraham Faber. Another possible origin is that Atha was once a personal name, probably Gaelic, which was often recorded in the Welsh border regions during the fourteenth century. In villages where there might have been dozens of people called John, they would have been distinguished one from another by describing their looks — perhaps John White, Grey or Brown etc, and these eventually became their surnames. The surname Petty, which is also found throughout much of Yorkshire, may be a variant of Petyt or it could have come from a place called Petty – again meaning ‘small’. Post was not sent - check your email addresses! According to the 1891 Census, there were 2,258 Butterfield families living in Yorkshire. ‘Banastre’ is in fact an Anglo-Norman term for a basket, and the original bearers of the name would have been basketmakers –  a very popular occupation around the time when surnames first became necessary. What better name for a summer month than Butterfield. An early bearer of this surname was Nicholas of Sallow, mentioned in the"Shropshire Rotuli Hundredorum"of 1254. That is to say names given to people after they left their original village to move somewhere else. The surname Spurr (and several variations) is found in many parts of the country but the greatest concentration of the name is nowadays found around the Wakefield area. In the 1362 Court Rolls for Bradford is recorded a William Drynkale who was described as being the ale taster for the manor. Soon after the Domesday survey, Waterton the place became the property of the Abbot of Selby and at some point between 1160 and 1179 it was given to Reiner de Normanby who later took the name de Waterton. The surname started when someone moved from somewhere called Hesketh and took on the place of their birth as a surname so that he could be distinguished from someone else in the village or town to where he’d moved. It is more likely that today’s bearers of the name spring from someone who either worked for a lord or had the name originally as a nickname. Researchers from the Centre for Nordic Studies, University of the Highlands and Islands and the TV channel HISTORY revealed the surnames linked to Viking settlers as part of a new survey. WARDROP At one time this Hesketh would have been a small hamlet but now it’s just about been gobbled up by surrounding areas. In the 1841 Census there were 248 people recorded with the name Drinkall – with around 10 per cent of them living in Yorkshire and a larger contingent over the border in Lincolnshire. So really, anyone with the popular names of Smith or Wright should feel no different from the Fabers when it comes to considering their surname origins. But it's good theater.Or, I suppose it could be that THE PLAN is coming to fruition. The place was recorded as a settlement in the thirteen century as ‘Hauewrth’ in 1209 and as ‘Hawurth’ in 1252. The first people with the name Maynard probably landed on our shores with the Normans in 1066… but Maynard wasn’t their surname, for  ‘Maginhard’, as it was then, was a personal (first) name. Whether this was a mispelling by the recorder or the family’s proper name I can’t tell. It is unlikely that the surname is associated with the Talbot dog which was a type of hunting hound, after which several pubs around the country have been named. Dr Alexandra Sanmark, from the University of the Highlands and Islands, said: 'Vikings in Britain can be traced through archaeological evidence, such as burials, place-names, DNA studies, Scandinavian influence on the English language. The Waterton family history is well worth researching. Hereabouts, back in medieval times, speyt was the local word for what we now call a woodpecker. Back in 1379, a ‘Johannes de Berlowe’ from here appears in the Poll Tax Records of Yorkshire, so it is quite possible a White Rose branch sprung from his family. On one hand, the XR lacks the high-resolution screen and dual-lens camera on the XS. Contrary to what it may claim on the internet or in some reference books the surname does not stem from some ungainly chap nicknamed ‘Gawky Rodger’. The earliest written evidence of Boocock doesn’t appear until the early 1600s (one example is in Rothwell parish, near Leeds) which suggests that it was spelled differently in the preceding centuries. Today it is thought that less than 13,000 people worldwide bear the Warnock name. Mogson also became Mockson (later Moxon); similarly  Pogson became Pockson and Poxon. Patrick was a Brunty until he entered St John’s College, Cambridge in 1802. HEY/HAWORTH In order to use the WikiLeaks public submission system as detailed above you can download the Tor Browser Bundle, which is a Firefox-like browser available for Windows, Mac OS X and GNU/Linux and … David writes about the smallholding being described in the 1600s as ‘perfectly preserved in the landscape by a dyke, a continuous wall, and a prominent bank thrown up from a well-defined ditch’ which matches perfectly with the original translation of ‘hey’. It could well have been given firstly as a nickname to a conjurer or magician but meanings and relevance of words have changed down the years – and it could well be that ‘praett’ also meant what we now regard as ‘cunningly clever’. DEWHIRST/DEWHURST It is even known to have been related to the dominant colour of the clothes a person was associated with. 'The people of the Viking Age did not have family names, but instead used the system of patronymics, where the children were named after their father, or occasionally their mother. It is said that if we track back far enough in time we’ll find we’re all related to each other in some way. Gordon inherited the paper and wealth, and was known for his extravagant and shocking lifestyle. The country’s biggest concentration of the name Lister is in the West Riding, especially in the area including Wakefield, Dewsbury and Halifax. In the case of families with the good old Yorkshire names of Popplewell and Scholes, tracing a common ancestor might be found sooner than imagined. Other famous Hattersleys were Richard and his son George, the earliest manufacturers of power looms, based in Keighley. The river name is derived from the pre-seventh-century Anglo-Saxon and German word ‘swalm’ meaning a whirlpool, intermixed with the Old English ‘swillan’ meaning to wash. Where the surname is in the plural form of Swales, this describes someone who was still resident by the Swale, rather than one who was formerly at the place. One expert has also suggested Darnton is a shortened version of Darrington, another Yorkshire town. Spelling over the centuries being at best erratic and local dialects very thick, often lead to the creation of “sounds like” spellings. CRAVEN It is generally agreed that the name is derived from the Old English (pre-seventh century) word ‘gleaw’, which meant cautious, prudent or wise (I thought all Yorkshiremen and women had those qualities?). Today the biggest stronghold of the Jewson name in the country is around the Halifax-Huddersfield area with another strong branch in the far north east of Yorkshire. I checked in the 1911 census to see if I could find a Crazy family living in Yorkshire and sure enough there is a Jonathan Edward Crazy aged 41 living with his wife and three children in Gilling West, just a few miles north of Richmond. The surnames of Loftus and Lofthouse probably have the same meaning but with different origins. The Rev Simon Crosby, his wife Ann and eight-week-old son Thomas made that tortuous journey which started from his place of birth, Holme-on-Spalding-Moor in the East Riding. This has led to some folk preferring the name ending to be -botham. I was surprised to read about Take That singer/songwriter Gary Barlow being made ‘honorary Yorkshireman’. Leeds-born Alan Bennett is of good Yorkshire stock, being born in 1934 to Walter and Lilian Mary who were married in Bramley in 1928. The name derives from the old English (pre seventh century) word sic, which means rivulet, stream or water course. The Jutes too, who earlier on settled the south of England, also came from … LILEY To show how surname spelling have altered, a Robert Bendelow was christened on June 20th 1817 at Well, in Yorkshire yet a previous recorded spelling of his family name is shown to be Bentlowe. The Newhouse surname in one form or another has been around the county since the 1100s. WIGFALL By 1881 there was a fair distribution of Warnocks in the south and east of the county but the biggest congregation remained in the Motherwell region of Scotland. There is a group of surnames that started out as nicknames. Born in Keighley on 20th February in 1781, was Isaac Butterfield, who at the age of just twenty months was three feet tall, and weighed nearly eight stone. Others say it is derived either from the place-name Sainville in northern France; from Sauville in Ardennes; or from the Old French words ‘saisne’, meaning Saxon, and ‘ville’, meaning settlement. Tingle is a fairly unusual name throughout the whole country but the biggest concentration can be found in south Yorkshire. Mawson is usually explained as ‘son of Matilda’, through the popular form Maud. CROSBY There is also a place in Derbyshire from where a branch of the surname sprung, and there is a glimmer of hope for Yorkshire Barlows. This is garbage as the word Jew didn’t appear anywhere until the eighteenth century, in the revised English language editions of the fourteenth-century first English translation of the New Testament. She wonders if through this famous ancient name her line could now be linked to Henry Bolingbroke (King Henry IV) who laid claim to the English crown in 1399. One of the first written records of the surname is in the Lay Subsidy Rolls of 1301, where there is a Roberto Rountre of Newby. Originally there was only one village named Dinsdale but now there are two – Low Dinsdale (on the ‘wrong’ bank of the Tees) and Over Dinsdale which is situated on a peninsula of land on the Yorkshire side. It may surprise you to know that the biggest concentration of people called Yorke is to be found in … the African country of Ghana. LISTER In many cases the bearer of the name wouldn’t be able to read or write. Today,  ‘thew’ means muscular, stemming from a Middle English word (spoken between around 1100 and 1500). The earliest I’ve tracked down so far is a Thomas Ledgard who was born in the town in 1496. The third theory, and probably unrelated to the Bibbys mentioned above, is that the surname derives from a village near Leicester now called Beeby. The former seventeenth-century mansion, which commanded distant views down the West Riding valleys, was once the home of a branch of the Savile family. Topham is also popular in Surrey where there is a place called Stopham, and there is also a village called Topsham in Devon. Wadsworth has remained a Yorkshire and East Lancashire name for centuries, first recorded in the Court Rolls of the Manor of Wakefield in 1275. The area took in places like Fixby, Lindley and Knowles. WADKIN The name means ‘settlement at the fork of a river’ from Old English words ‘twisla’ and ‘tun’ – in this case where Kingsdale Beck meets the River Greta. Geldart has the air of a foreign name about it – but it is firmly entrenched in Yorkshire. However, if you were starting to worry about Geoffrey’s Yorkshireness you need not fear, as his mother was of sound Yorkshire stock. 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I’m not saying they are wrong – I haven’t seen their evidence – but they do seem to be assuming that the original Crosby family originated from the best-known town called Crosby on the west coast near Merseyside. The term ‘Gordon Bennett’ is said to allude to his wild ways, and perhaps originated as a euphemism for ‘gorblimey’ (although there are other theories on the expression’s origin). STRINGER The name is popular in Yorkshire but the biggest concentration is in the Midlands. Former politician and author Roy Hattersley is famously connected with Sheffield, so he may well stem from the south Yorkshire clan. Some believe it derives from the French word pel meaning a ‘boundary marker’. It is believed that this name started in the Galloway region, it’s translation meaning ‘son of Ascaidh’, a former personal name. Hello playmates! Wilfred was born in Halifax in 1904 and that area is still thought to have more residents with the name than anywhere else in the country. ISSOTT A branch of Jessops moved to Kirkburton near Huddersfield and today the largest concentration of those with the surname live in the Kirklees postal area. Today it is classed as a grange of the abbey but back in the time when surnames were being deemed necessary life there would have been very different. Before the thirteenth century, the baptismal name Benne also appeared in transcripts (nothing to do with the modern name Benjamin or the shortened form, Ben). It is thought that because these ‘holms’ could not support many families they saw frequent migration and inevitably the new neighbours in the Middle Ages would have described the migrants as, for example, ‘John of the Holm/s’. The former meant the dark colour; the latter meant almost the opposite: ‘pale’ (think of our current word ‘bleak’).