Silverstone

Recorded as Silverston and Silverstone, this is an excellent example of an English locational surname. The village of Silverstone in the county of Northamptonshire from which the name originates, is recorded in the famous Domesday Book of 1066 as Selvestone. This is a spelling so near to the present form as to be quite remarkable, and very rare. Most place names have changed substantially over the past thousand years, some as to be unrecognizeable. According to the Oxford Dictionary of English Place names Silverstone translates as "Saewulfs farm" which is probable, as it is almost certain that the first element refers to a personal name, whilst -ton is always a place or farm. Locational surnames are "from" names. That is to say a name given to a person after he or sometimes she, left their original homestead, and moved somewhere else - often far away. London was the popular destination of people living within a hundred miles, and this name is well recorded there since Stuart times, and possibly earlier. Very interestingly and showing that it is a true locational name, it is not recorded in its home county of Northamptonshire at all. Examples in the surviving church registers of the city of London include Samuell Silverston who married Elizabeth Came at St James Clerkenwell on February 5th 1668, and Roger Silverstone, a christening witness at St Botolphs without Aldgate, on June 2nd 1672.