Kenworth

There are believed to be over twenty five places in England, mostly very small villages, called Kingswood and Kingsworth, which means exactly the same. They are nearly all in the middle or south of the country, and it is from any or even all of the places that the surname originated. All the placenames mean what they appear to describe, that is a wood owned by a king, from the pre 7th century Old English "cynge - wudu". It may be that in ancient times, were a map to be drawn, it would be found that all the villages were all in areas set aside for hunting, the great passion of the past. Kingswood, Kingsworth and the dialectals Kingwarth, Kinewarth, Kenwood, and Kenworth, being locational names are also "from" names. That is to say names given to a person after he and sometimes she, left their original homes to move somewhere else. Because there are so many places in the gazetters of England, it would be reasonable to speculate that over the centuries many nameholders would have drifted away from their home villages, and the surname would be quite popular, but this is not so, the surname is actually quite rare. Perhaps living in a village owned by a king gave added security, but on this point history seems to be quite silent. The largest surname grouping would seem to not surprsingly in the city of London, with recordings from Elizabethan times. These include examples such as the barely recognizeable Henry Kinewarth, christened at St Giles Cripplegate on April 22nd 1571, John Kingswood who a century later married Elizabeth Ryton at St James Dukes Place, Westminster, on February 12th 1683, and Frances Kingsworth who was christened at St Sepulchre church, on February 6th 1701.