Wallett

Recorded as Walet, Wallet, Wallett, Wallit, and others, this is an English surname. It does not seem to appear in any of the known dictionaries of surnames, which is surprising as it quite well recorded in most southern counties of England although never in large numbers. It may be a diminutive of the famous personal name and later surname Walter, although this is usually Watt and Wattie, but it is also possible that it is a "lost" village surname. These in themselves are not unusual, some five thousand surnames of the British Isles are believed to originate from such places. What is really unusual with this surname is that it may be from a known "lost" village and one which is literally at sea. If so this is Wallet, believed to have been an inhabited island in the 16th century, and lying of the coast of Essex, about five miles from The Naze. We do know that over one hundred villages have been lost to coastal erosion in the past five centuries including twenty in the River Humber estuary alone. This may be another. Examples of recordings in the surviving church registers of Greater London, include from Elizabethan times Anne Wallett who married Richard Drive at St Giles Cripplegate on October 23rd 1592, and Hanah Wallit, so much for spelling, christened at St. Andrews Holborn, on November 24th 1718.