Camden

This interesting name is of Anglo-Saxon origin, and is a locational surname deriving from either of the places now called Broad Campden and Chipping Campden, near Evesham, in Gloucestershire. The original settlement was recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 as "Campedene", clearly showing the derivation from the Old English pre 7th Century "campa-denu", from "campas", enclosure, camp, from the Latin "campus", plain, with "denu", valley. The placename means "valley with camps or enclosures". By the early 14th Century, the settlement had divided, and is recorded as "Cheping Caumpedene" and "Brodecaumpene". Locational surnames were acquired especially 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 can be found as Camden and Cambden. Among the recordings of the name in London is that of the marriage of Thomas Cambden and Alice Rugg, at St. Stephen and St. Benet's, on February 16th 1696. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Ebrard de Campeden, which was dated 1190, in the "Cambridgeshire Pipe Rolls", during the reign of King Richard 1, known as "Richard the Lionheart", 1189 - 1199. 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.