Langfitt

This curious name is of Anglo-Saxon origin, and although at first sight it would appear to have developed from a nickname for someone with noticeably large feet, it is in fact a dialectal variant of the locational surname Langford, found particularly in Nottinghamshire and the neighbouring counties of Leicestershire and Lincolnshire. The source of the surname is Langford near Newark in Nottinghamshire, recorded as "Landeforde" in the Domesday Book of 1086, and so called from the Olde English pre 7th Century "landa", boundary, and "ford", ford. There are a number of other places in the British Isles called Langford, but these are all named with the Olde English "lang, long", long, and "ford". The surname development from Langford to Longfoot has included the following examples: Langforthe (1574, Nottinghamshire); Longforthe (1574, ibid.); Longfat (1608, Yorkshire); Langfitt (1615, Lincolnshire); Lingfoot (1615, Yorkshire); and Longfut (1676, Lincolnshire). Recordings from Church Registers include: the marriage of John Longfoote and Jacoba Measure at Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire, on January 29th 1599, and the marriage of William Longfoot and Ann Rowse on May 22nd 1692, at Pinchbeck in Lincolnshire. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of William de Langfit, which was dated 1292, in the "Records of Pleas before Edward 1 to Edward 111", during the reign of King Edward 1, known as "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.