The Coming of the Name Todd to Scotland and England

Richard McMurtry

Jan 2024

 

 

Text Box: The word tod/todde is an Anglo-Saxon word meaning fox. Northumbrian Old English had been established in Scotland as far as the River Forth (Edinburgh) in the 7th century. So the word tod/todde would have come with it. The Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Northumbria at its peak in the 900s extended from what is now Northern England all the way to the River Forth around Edinburgh and parts of the Scottish Lowlands. The word also made its way into Old English and then the Scots language around the time following the conquest of England by William the Conquerer of Normandy in 1066.

Text Box: By 1381, most families in England had adopted hereditary surnames; in 1483, King Edward pushed for all citizens of England to take a surname. I could not find comparable dates for taking of surnames in Scotland. There were individual adoption of the surname Todd by the nobility in England and Scotland. For The surname Todd was first found in Norfolk where Hugo, Ardin Tod was first listed 1168-1175 and later again in Oxfordshire in 1225. A few years later, Richard Todd was found in Northumberland in 1231 and Richard le Todde was found in the Subsidy Rolls for Worcestershire in 1275. John Todde was high sheriff of York in 1390. Thomas Tod (1450-1510), a leather merchant, was four times Provost of the City of Edinburgh beginning in 1488 Text Box: In fourteenth century Scotland, the growth in prestige of Early Scots and the complementary decline of French made Scots the prestige dialect of most of eastern Scotland. By the beginning of the 15th century (that is, 1400s), Early Scots (derived from Old English) had spread as far north as Aberdeenshire and west from Edinburgh to Glasgow and down into northern Ayrshire.

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However, the assumption of surnames in the 1400s and 1500s by large numbers of Todd individuals and families was not related to descendancy from one of these members of the aristocracy, but rather a more random process of taking on a surname to be responsive to the pressures to do so.

Hence, the name originated independently in England and Scotland and from there spread to Northern Ireland, the United States and then to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India and South Africa.