Mr Matthew Thomas James Bagworth

• Birth Notes

  This is a rare English surname. It is locational from a place called Bagworth and Ellistown in the county of Leicestershire. The place name probably means Badgers wood or Baega's wood the latter being an early English personal name. Bagworth is first recorded in the famous Domesday Book of 1086 as Bageworde, and as Baggeworth in the charters of the county in 1270. Locational surnames are usually "from" names.That is to say surnames given to people when they left their original homes for whatever reason, to move somewhere else. It was then, and it remains so today that one of the easiest ways to identify a stranger is to call him or her after the place from whence they came. In this case the surname is quite rare, with the largest number of recordings in the neighbouring county of Nottinghamshire. These include examples taken from surviving early church registers such as Alice Bagworth who married Ralph Shawe at Balderton, on November 25th 1585, and William Bagwoorth (as spelt) who married Catherine Walhead, which is probably another mispelling, at St Peters Nottingham, on September 7th 1641. This was just in time for the start of the English Civil War in Nottingham on January 10th 1642.