Toten

Recorded in various spellings including Toten, Totten, Tootin, Tootinge, and Totton, this is an English surname. It is locational from the village of Toton in the county of Nottinghamshire. This village is first recorded in the famous Domesday Book of 1086 as Tovetune, and two centuries later as Toueton. According to the Oxford Dictionary of Place Names the translation is "Tofi's house" from a Norse or Scandanavian personal name Tolofr, of which Tofi is a short or nickname form. This may well be so, although recent research has indicated that many of the early places name suffix, which were thought to have been personal names, are now considered more likely to have been topographical, and refer to a local feature in the countryside. Certainly a "tot" was known to refer to a "look out" post during the 9th century, and as spelling was at its best erratic and local dialects very thick, early examples of place recordings should be treated with some suspicion. What is certain is that being a locational surname, also makes it a "from" name. That is to say a name given to people after they left their original homes and moved elsewhere. It was and it remains today, that one of the easiest ways to identify a stranger was to call him or sometimes her, by the name of the place from whence they came. In this case the surname is well recorded in the diocese of Greater London, and examples include: Henry Totton, who married Elizabeth Croscombe at St Dunstans in the East, Stepney, on August 15th 1602, John Tootinge, who married Alice Coale at St Botolphs Bishopgate, on November 1st 1655, and James Tootin, who married Anne Murphy at St Lukes, Finsbury, on June 2nd 1776.