Oldland

Recorded as Oldland and Olland, this is an English surname. It is locational from either of two villages called Oldland in the counties of Gloucester and Sussex. Locational surnames were names given either to the local lord of the manor and his descendants or perhaps more usually to people who for whatever reason left their original homes and moved somewhere esle. The easiest way to identify these 'strangers' was for their new neighboiurs to call them by the name of the place from whence they came. Spelling being at best indifferent, and local accents very thick, soon lead to the development of 'sounds like' spellings. In this case the earliest recordings are at the very begining of the creation of surnames. The first known surname recording is that of Wluard Oldelond in the register of the abbey of Ely in Huntingdonshire, in the year 1221, whilst Hugh de la Aldelond appears in the pipe rolls of the county of Somerset in 1260. The name does literallly mean 'the old land', and was probably a reference to land which had been taken out of agriculture, although it may have the opposite meaning of land which has always been in use, because it was good land.