Leversuch

This unusual surname is of Anglo-Saxon origin, and is a locational name from Liversedge, a parish south east of Bradford in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Recorded as "Livresec" in the Domesday Book of 1086, and as "Liversegge" in "Memorials of the Abbey of Fountains", dated 1198, the place was so called from the Olde English pre 7th Century personal name "Leofhere", a compound of the elements "Leof", beloved, and "heri", army, with "ecg", edge, ridge, crest of a sharply pointed ridge; hence, Leofhere's ecg". Locational surnames, such as this, were originally given to local landowners, and the lord of the manor, and especially as a means of identification to those who left their birthplace to settle elsewhere. Regional and dialectal differences subsequently gave rise to several variations on the original spelling of the name, which in the modern idiom is found as Liversage, Liversedge, Liversidge, Leversage and Leversuch. On March 10th 1545, Elizabeth Lyversuch, an infant, was christened at St. Mary Magdalene, Old Fish Street, London, and on July 22nd 1727, Elizabeth Leversuch and Anthony Bodlidge were married at St. Anne's, Soho, Westminster. A Coat of Arms granted to the family is a silver shield with a chevron between three black ploughshares erect, the Crest being a gold leopard's face jessant-de-lis. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Robert de Liverseg, which was dated 1212, in the "Curia Regis Rolls of Yorkshire", during the reign of King John, known as "Lackland", 1199 - 1216. 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.