Dimmock

This unusual and long-established surname is of English origin, and is habitational from a place called Dymock in Gloucestershire. The place has an uncertain etymology, but it may be derived from the British word which is akin to the Welsh "tymoch", pigsty (a compound of "ty", house, and "moch", pigs), but more probably from "din", fort, and "moch", as before. It is sometimes difficult to be precise about whether a surname is derived from an identifying topographic phrase or from a habitational name from some inor, unidentified or "lost" place; this is especially so in the case of multiple element names. The placename was first recorded as "Dimoch" in the Domesday Book of 1086; as "Dimmok" in the 1156 Red Book of the Exchequer; and as "Dimmoch" in the Pipe Rolls of 1156 and 1190. The modern surname can also be found recorded as Dymock, Dymoke, Dimmack and Dimmick, and the Dymoke family have held the hereditary position of King's Champion for thirty-four generations. Recordings from Gloucestershire Church Registers include: the marriage of John Dimmock and Elizabeth Sly on December 26th 1644, at Shipton Moyne, and the marriage of Giles Dimmock and Rebecca Jenner on April 11th 1696, at Storehouse. A Coat of Arms granted to the family is a silver shield, a cross pattee red in each end a small semicircle (or a cross pattee with one engrail). The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Nicholas de Dimmoch, which was dated 1169, in the "Pipe Rolls of Gloucestershire", during the reign of King Henry 11, known as "The Builder of Churches", 1154 - 1189. 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.