Toothill

Recorded in several spellings including Tootal, Tootell, Toothill, Tootill, Tothull, Tootle, Tuttle, Tuthill, and Tutill, this is a very interesting English surname. It is either topographical for a person who lived by a hill used as a look-out station, from the Olde English pre 7th century "totian", meaning to peer, and "hyll", a hill, or it is a locational name from any of the various places named with these elements. These include: Toot Hill in the counties of Essex, Hampshire, and Hertfordshire; Tothill in Lincolnshire, and Middlesex; Tootle Height in Lancashire; Tuttle Hill in Warwickshire, and Toothill, near Brighouse in West Yorkshire. A quotation from "Promptorium Parvulorum", a medieval dictionary, reads "Totehylle, or hey place of Lokynge", and in his History of East Cheshire, Earwaker mentions that "near the forest chapel is a small quadrangular Roman camp, situate on a hill called Toot-hill", indicating that the Romans probably used the hill as a look-out against the approach of the enemy. Early recordings of the surname include: Custance Totel of Cambridgeshire, in the Hundred Rolls of 1273; Roger Tothull of Oxfordshire in the same year, and Johannes de Totehill, noted in the 1379 Poll Tax Returns of Yorkshire. The first recorded spelling of the family name is believed to be that of Gilbert de Totehille. This was dated 1185, in the Knights Templar (Crusader) register for the county of Warwickshire, during the reign of King Henry 11 of England, 1154 - 1189. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop", often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.