Cypler

This unusual locational English surname is locational. It seems to be specifically a West Midland surname where most, if not quite all, early church recordings are to be found. It is or has been over the centuries recorded in a wide variety of spellings including Ciple, Cyple, Cypler, Cyples, Sipple, Sopliss, Sipless and Sipes, and all seem to derive from the same root. This is the pre 7th century Olde English personal name Cippa, and the suffix cnoll, to translate as "Cippa's knoll". This place may have been the hamlet of Ceppecnole, recorded in the Domesday Book for Shropshire in 1086, or it may refer to a now "lost" medieval location. Strictly speaking "Cipp(a)" means a beam or a structure built of logs, so it is possible that the word "ceppec(a)nole" could refer to a house on a knoll. Locational surnames are usually "from" names, or surnames given to people after they left their original village to move somewhere else. However in this context when found as Cypler it means a person "of Cyple". The early recordings include Jesse Cyple, who married Lydia Steel at Norton in the Moors, on December 8th 1795, and Jesse Cyples who married Mary Peel at Fulford, Staffordshire, on May 31st 1863. 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.