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origin
"In England it is well understood that our name, so common there, is Anglo-Saxon. In the Index of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle giving the events in Great Britain beginning with the year A.D. 1 and running to the year A.D. 1066, we find the name of 'Dudda-Dudd-Dodd-Dodds-Dowde-Deeds, etc.' all considered the same name, and on page 60 the death of one Dudda, an Alderman, is recorded as having occurred in the year A.D. 833.
"I had always supposed that the original way of spelling our family name with with three letters -- Dod -- so my conclusion is that the way it was spelled then lay entirely with the Parish Clerk, Rector, or Court Clerk. It seems that most of the yeomen and husbandmen in England in the early 1600s, even though they owned or controlled land like Thomas Dod, could neither read nor write. He signed his will with a 'mark'.
"As more convincing proof that our family name was spelled both ways in England for centuries, I refer to a privately printed English book of but twenty-five copies, one of which was loanted to me by Mr. Philip H. Wadell-Smith, of Princeton, N.J. The title page reads as follows:
Pedigree of the Family of Dod of Cloverly, in the County of Shropshire.
Compiled by Sir William Dugdale, Knt., Garter;
With a continuation to the Year 1844, extracted from the records of the College of Arms, by Albert W. Woods, Lancaster Herald;
Together with the Pedigrees of the Families of Dod of Edge, by Richard St. George, Norroy, 1613;
Henshaw of Lockwood, 1618; Humphreys of Bodlwithan, 1660.
Copied from the originals in the possession of Whitehall Dod, Esq., of Llannerch, and Mrs. Parker, of Edge.
Privately Printed -- Twenty-five copies
1867
"I have carefully studied these pedigrees running back over five hundred years and find that through the generations and centuries the spelling of the name varied much between Dod and Dodd, and in some generations differed even between brothers. In many cases clergymen of the family used 'Dodd', so it could not have been done in ignorance as they must have been educated. Excepting for the first three generations of the family of Dod of Edge all spelled the name 'Dodd'. Copies of Armorial bearings of these families are shown in that book also."
==other versions of this surname==
sources
- The Genealogy of the Daniel Dod Family 1615-1940 by Allison Dodd and Rev. Joseph Fulford Folsom, Secretary of the New Jersey Historical Society.
links
- https://www.stirnet.com/genie/data/british/dd/dod01.php (membership required to view without interruption)
- https://www.stirnet.com/genie/data/british/dd/dod03.php (membership required to view without interruption)