Cyples

This unusual locational name is not only based upon the Staffordshire area, but specifically Stoke-upon-Trent, where all early church recordings are found. The surname is recorded in a wide variety of spellings including Sipple, Sopliss, Sipless and Sipes, but all seem to derive from the same root. This is the Olde English personal name "Cippa", plus the suffix "cnoll", to translate as "Cippa's knoll". This place may have been the "Ceppecnole", recorded in the 1086 Domesday Book for Shropshire, 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. The recordings include Jesse Cyples, who married Lydia Steel at Norton in the Moors, on December 8th 1795, and Jesse Cyples (believed to be the great grandson), who married Mary Peel at Fulford, Staffordshire, on May 31st 1863. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Richard and Janae Cyples, which was dated October 19th 1700, witnesses at the christening of their son, Joseph, at Stoke-upon-Trent, Staffordshire, during the reign of King William 111 of Orange and England, 1689 - 1702. 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.