Warsop

This unusual and interesting name is of Anglo-Saxon origin, and is a locational surname deriving from the town called (Market) Warsop in Nottinghamshire. The placename is recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 as "Warsope" and "Wareshope", and as "Warshop" in the Nottinghamshire Charter Rolls of 1233. The name means "Waer's valley", derived from the Olde English pre 7th Century personal name "Waer", from "waer", cautious, with "hop", valley, enclosed valley. Locational surnames were mostly acquired by those former inhabitants of a place who had moved to another area, and were thereafter best identified by the name of their birthplace. The modern surname from this source can be found as Warsop, and the less common Warsap. Among the recordings of the name in Lincolnshire Church Registers is that of Rychard Warsope, a christening witness on November 12th 1586, in New Sleaford, and of the marriage of John Warsop and Jane Aldgate at St. Margaret in the Close, Lincoln, on May 7th 1727. A Coat of Arms granted to the family is per pale silver and red a saltire between four crescents counterchanged. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of George Washop, which was dated May 22nd 1570, marriage to Margaret Bernard, at St. Dunstan's, Stepney, London, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth 1, known as "Good Queen Bess", 1558 - 1603. 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.