The surname Wood is usually dismissed in a few
words when mentioned in reference works pertaining to surnames. The
meaning is given as something like “dweller in or near a wood.” In The
Homes of Family Names (1890), author H.B. Guppy identifies the
surname as common in most English counties. It is also generally—and
correctly—assumed to have had multiple origins, unlike more specific
names such as Woodhead. The inference is that the genealogist is
unlikely to be able to identify an individual family source, and that is
not good news for those New Englanders who can trace themselves back to
families arriving in America in the 1600s. Many English surnames are
very distinctive and can be seen to belong to one English region but
unfortunately that is not the case with Wood.
the surname may have an alternative explanation. In P.H. Reaney’s A
Dictionary of English Surnames, the author quoted one or two early
examples of by-names which seem to derive from the Middle English word
“wod(e),” which meant “frenzied or mad.” However, there is no evidence
that any of these ever became hereditary. Much more interesting is Dr.
Reaney’s evidence that both Wood and Woodward may have derived from an
occupational meaning. However, even if we disregard these possible
alternatives, the meaning and the origins of Wood are both of
considerable interest, and this becomes clear once we look more closely
at the word’s semantic history.
Students of the
English landscape know that most of the country was once covered by
woodland, yet the full story of its transformation has never been told.
Oliver Rackham opened our eyes to much of its history in Trees and
Woodland in the British Landscape (1976, revised 1990), but even he
could tell us little about its origins. Rackham writes that we have no
memory in England of our pioneering days and that the first wildwoods
passed away in prehistory, leaving neither written record nor legend.
That is not to say that the woods themselves vanished from the landscape
for that would not be true. Research will show that much of our
woodland was cleared even before the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons, but
the considerable areas that remained were almost certainly “managed,” in
order to provide our ancestors with the implements and building
materials they so desperately needed.
after the Norman Conquest, at the time when surnames were stabilizing
and each village or community was surrounded by its pastures and plowed
land, “the wood” still lay beyond that ring of cultivation. “The wood”
was home to many wild creatures and provided a barrier between
neighboring communities, one that had to be traversed by the medieval
traveler. We can find out about the managed woodland that surrounded
villages in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries from studying written
records, maps, place-names, and the boundaries and fences of the
These prove to us that many
places named Wood and Woodhouse commemorate a phase of “colonization” in
the medieval period, as the population increased significantly, and
before its dramatic decline during the Black Death. In my own immediate
area there are many townships which have a hamlet nearby named
Woodhouse, e.g. Huddersfield, Emley, Rastrick, Shelley, and Cartworth.
There is also Woodsome, near Farnley Tyas, which once meant “at the
houses in the wood,” a dative plural. When these houses of hamlets were
established, between 650 and 1000 years ago, they formed islands of
cultivation in “the wood.” Many of them gave rise to hereditary
surnames. In Halifax, the surname appears to have at least two distinct
sources, one in Fixby and the other in Ovenden, but there are references
also to Woods in Sowerby, and the origin is more complicated than first
charter of c.1200 refers to “thirteen acres…of the assart (i.e.
clearing) in the wood of Fekesbi,” granted to William the clerk and his
heirs, and the minor place-names suggest that this was close to where
the isolated farm called “the Wood” still stands. The earliest example
of a surname associated with the locality is found in the court rolls.
John del Wode appears in 1276 and thereafter the family is mentioned at
frequent intervals into the mid-1600s. Recognition is not always
straightforward: in some of the earliest documents the name is Latinised
as “del Bosco” and in others it is written “att Wodd,” but the line of
descent is reasonably clear.
remained at “the Wood” until about 1570, and a conveyance of 1580
clarifies this crucial episode in their history. Agnes, wife of the
deceased Edward Saltonstall of “the Wood” occupied the farm at that
time. She was the “daughter and heiress of John Wodd, late of Wodd” and
the farm was put into the hands of trustees until their son Edward
should come of age. Not long afterwards the widow married a neighbor,
Thomas Brook, and in 1609, Edward Saltonstall, junior, sold the farm to
John Thornhill, the lord of the manor of Fixby.
Clearance was also taking place in
Ovenden in the 1200s and there are charters that refer to assarts there.
One of these clearings, aptly called “Riding,” was leased in 1276 to
Henry de Myggelay, who was granted “estovers” (wood rights) “in the wood
of Ovenden, for burning.” In an undated deed, Matthew del Bosco,
elsewhere called Matthew del Wode, witnessed a similar grant to Robert
de Grenehirst, although his rights were to wood for house-building and
The surname Wood expanded more
successfully in Ovenden than in Fixby. A subsidy roll of 1545 indicated
that four branches of the family were taxed there, not to mention other
Wood families in Sowerby, Warley, Southowram, and Heptonstall, all in
the same parish. It is impossible to say how many different families
this involved but there are two points worth noting. The first is that
there is no reference in Ovenden to a tenement or holding called Wood
associated with the surname. The second is that a Matthew Wood was
witnessing Fixby deeds in the early 1300s, at the very same time that a
Matthew Wood was witnessing Ovenden deeds. There is also firm evidence
that a man of this name acquired land in parts of Sowerby, so it is at
least a possibility that all the Halifax Woods share a common origin in
Fixby in the mid-1200s.
Sources and Further
Matthew Wood, “English Origins of
the Mitchell, Wood, Lum and Halstead Families”The New York
Genealogical and Biographical Record, Jan. 1989, Vol. 120, No. 1.
P.H. Reaney, The Origin of English Surnames,
W.G. Hoskins, The Making of
the English Landscape, (1955).
Redmonds, Halifax and District, Yorkshire Surnames Series, Part 3,
The Clarke Thornhill
Collection, DD12, Yorkshire Archaeological Society, Claremont, Leeds.
Yorkshire Deeds, Yorkshire Archaeological
Society, Record Series, Vols. 39, 50, 63,