Chaddock

This interesting surname, widely recorded in Lancashire, is of Anglo-Saxon origin, and is a habitation name either from Chaddock, an ancient estate in the township of Tyldesley, in the parish of Leigh, Lancashire, or else a dialectal variant of Chadwick, itself a locational name from the hamlet thus called near Rochdale in Lancashire. The initial element in both placenames is the Olde English pre 7th Century male given name "Ceadda" (perhaps St. Chad, a 7th Century Northumbrian bishop), with respectively the Old Norse "dokk", a valley or hollow, and the Olde English "wic", an early loan-word from the Latin "vicus", dwelling-place, village, hamlet, town. Locational surnames, such as this, were originally given to local landowners, and the lord of the manor, and especially as a means of identification to those who left their birthplace to settle elsewhere. There are also places called Chadwick in Worcestershire and Warwickshire, but this surname is unlikely to derive from either of these sources. On October 28th 1595, Elizabeth Chaddock and Henry Morres were married at Wigan, Lancashire, and in 1554, John Chadwikke alias Chaddokke was recorded in the Coroners' Rolls, Nottinghamshire. A Coat of Arms granted to the Chaddock family is a red shield with a silver inescutcheon charged with a plain cross of the field, within an orle of martlets of the second, the Crest being a silver martlet. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of William Chadock, which was dated February 3rd 1543, recorded at Farnworth near Prescot, Lancashire, during the reign of King Henry V111, known as "Bluff King Hal", 1509 - 1547. 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.