Cutmere

This interesting surname, now chiefly found in the East Anglian counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire, is of Anglo-Saxon origin, and is a locational name either from Cutmere, a locality in the St. Germans rural district of Cornwall, or from a reduced locality around Cotmore House in Oxfordshire. The component elements of the placename are most likely the Olde English pre 7th Century personal name "Cuda", a short form of various compound names with a first element "cuth", famous, well known, and "mar", moor, fen. This personal name is also found as an initial element in Cudham, Kent, also Cudworth and Cutcombe in Somerset. Locational surnames were originally given to local landowners, and the Lord of the Manor, and especially the former inhabitants who left their place of origin to live and work in an other area. Regional and dialectal differences subsequently produced several variations in the spelling of the name, which, in the modern idiom, include: Cudmore, Cutmere, Cutmore and Cutmare. On July 2nd 1576, Vincent Cutmore and Margaret Lovecroft were married at Stoke in Teignhead, Devonshire, and on December 18th 1592, the marriage of Thomas Cutmore to Margaret Bury took place in Soham, Cambridgeshire. The Coat of Arms most associated with the name is a silver shield with a red fesse nebulee between three black eagles displayed, armed red, the Crest being a gold griffin passant. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of John Cuddimeore, which was dated January 8th 1542, marriage to Alice Hows, at North Currey, Somerset, during the reign of Henry V111, known as "Bluff King Hal", 1509 - 1547. 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.