Wentworth

This is a famous English locational surname. It originates from either Wentworth in Yorkshire and near to the city of Sheffield, or Wentworth in Cambridge, and near to the city of Ely. Both places may owe something to the Danish-Vikings of the pre 9th century, in that in the famous Domesday Book of 1086 they were both recorded as "Winteworde". According to the Dictionary of English Place Names this means not as might be expected, Winter's wood, from the Olde English personal name "Wintra" and "-worth", a wood, but the worp or thorp, a Danish word and meaning an outlying farm, (the modern thorp or thorpe), with wintra meaning winter, and hence a place which specifically provided shelter in winter, perhaps because it was low lying. The surname has had a long and usually distinguished history, originating it is said, for many nameholders, from Robert de Wentworth of Woodhouse in the West Riding of Yorkshire in the year 1260. The name is popular both in Ireland, where it was established by John Wentworth of Fyanstown Castle, County Meath in about 1668, in Australia by William Wentworth, (1793 - 1872) whose mother had been transported to New South Wales in 1788 for stealing clothes, and in the new American colonies by Hugh Wentworth, who sailed from London to Bermuda on the ship Truelove, on June 10th 1635.