My mother's maiden name: Rutt
Rutt
(Entry from Fairbairn's Book of Crests, 1905 ed.)
Buckinghamshire
The Sun In Splendour Or.
Recorded in several spellings as shown below, this is an English surname. It has two possible origins. Firstly it may be a byname applied to a cheerful person. If so then the origin is the Old English pre 7th century word "rot" meaning glad.
Secondly it may be a metonymic occupational name for a musician, one who played the "rote", a medieval stringed instrument. The word "rote" is itself cognate with the Welsh "crwth", and describes a form of harp.
The surname is one of the very earliest recorded, although it is arguable as to whether the original holder or holders would have recognized it as such. In ancient times occupational surnames only became heriditary, when a son followed the father into the same occupation. The importance of this surname was very early with Walter Rote appearing in the register of the Knight Templars, the famous crusaders, for the county of Lincolnshire in 1185. Modern spellings of the surname are known to include Root, Roote, Rutt, and the patronymics Rootes and Roots. Early examples of the name recording include James Rutt of the county of Suffolk in 1524 when he appears in the Hearth Tax rolls, Edward, the son of Isaac and Mary Root, who was christened on March 18th 1621 at All Hallows's church, London Wall, city of London, whilst John Root was one of the earliest settlers in the colony of Virginia, New England. He appears in the earliest "muster" of the colony as living on Hog Island, on February 4th 1624. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Aethelstan Rota, which was dated 955, in the "Old English Records", during the reign of King Ethelred 11, known as "The Unready", 978 - 1016.
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And my Nan's maiden name was WOODSTOCK...would you believe!
Woodstock
This interesting name is Anglo-Saxon in origin, and is a locational surname deriving from the place called "Woodstock" in Oxfordshire. The placename is recorded as "Wudustoc" in the "Anglo-Saxon Laws" of circa 1000, and as "Wudestoke" in the 1123 "Anglo Saxon Chronicles", and means, simply, "the place in the woods". The derivation is from the Old English pre 7th Century "Wudu", wood, with "stoc", often used to mean just "place", but also used to denote an outlying hamlet or dependent settlement. Locational surnames were usually given to the Lord of the Manor, and to those former inhabitants of a place who moved to another area. One Robert Woodstock was an early emigrant to the New World, leaving London on the "Matthew", bound for St.Christopher's, in 1635. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Huddle de Wodestok, which was dated 1273, The Oxfordshire Hundred Rolls, during the reign of King Edward I, "The Hammer of the Scots", 1272 - 1307. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was known as Poll Tax. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.
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