Bingley

This is certainly one of the most unusual and interesting of all British surnames. It is, perhaps surprisingly, locational and like the surnames Brummidge and Cogzell derives from a place, in their case Birmingham and Coggleshall. With "Bingle" the town is Bingley in Yorkshire, although the simple loss of the "y" suffix makes all the difference to both the sound and the appearance. Had it not been for the fact that "Bingle" was first recorded in Yorkshire, we might have been tempted to find another solution, but clearly "Bingle: like "Brummidge" is a local dialect form. Locational surnames were generally given or adopted when a person moved to another locality, an immediate form of identity. Sometimes this identity was national such as English or Scot(t), sometimes by county, but usually by town or village or even farmstead. In this case the early surname was "Bingelay" (see below) and later Byngelay, before reverting to the (near) original spelling in the 16th and 17th century. "Bingle" is first recorded in what is now South Yorkshire, Godfrid Bingle, the son of Roberti Bingle, being christened at Bolton on Dearne on January 10th 1606. Other recordings include Godfrey Byngeley of Royston, Yorkshire on December 28th 1661, and Thomas Bingle, a witness at the famous church of St Dunstans in the East, London, on March 14th 1655. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Battes de Bingelay, which was dated 1273, in the Hundred Rolls of Yorkshire, during the reign of King Edward 1, known as "The hammer of the Scots," 1272 - 1307. 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.