The origins of the name Dewalt are from the ancient Anglo-Saxon culture of Britain. It is derived from the baptismal name Theobald,which was an ancient personal name. After the Norman Conquest, the Old English naming system gradually dissolved. Old English names became less common and were replaced by popular continental European names. The earliest surnames in England were found shortly after the Norman Conquest and are of Norman French rather than native English origins.
The surname Dewalt was first found in the Domesday Book of 1086; several bearers of Dewalt as a personal name were recorded as landowners after the Norman Conquest, particularly in Huntingdonshire, Cambridgeshire, and Suffolk. The first recorded instance of Dewalt as a surname occurred in 1199, where Tomas Teobald was living in Gloucestershire.
Theobald or Tedbaldus (d. 1161), was Archbishop of Canterbury and came of a Norman family of knightly rank who settled near Thierceville, in the neighbourhood of Bec Hellouin. "He became a monk of Bec between 1093 and 1124, was made prior in 1127, and elected abbot in 1137. The see of Canterbury having been vacant since the death of William of Corbeil in 1136, the prior of Christ Church and a deputation of monks were summoned before King Stephen and the legate Alberic, and on 24 Dec. 1138 elected Theobald archbishop. " [1]
This web page shows only a small excerpt of our Dewalt research. Another 85 words (6 lines of text) covering the years 1199, 1601, 1688, 1744 and 1760 are included under the topic Early Dewalt History in all our PDF Extended History products and printed products wherever possible.
Sound was what guided spelling in the essentially pre-literate Middle Ages, so one person's name was often recorded under several variations during a single lifetime. Also, before the advent of the printing press and the first dictionaries, the English language was not standardized. Therefore, spelling variations were common, even among the names of the most literate people. Known variations of the Dewalt family name include Theobald, Theobalds, Diebold, Theobold, Tubald, Tudball, Dipple, Diebald, Teupel, Diepelt, Dewalt and many more.
Another 46 words (3 lines of text) are included under the topic Early Dewalt Notables in all our PDF Extended History products and printed products wherever possible.
For political, religious, and economic reasons, thousands of English families boarded ships for Ireland, the Canadas, the America colonies, and many of smaller tropical colonies in the hope of finding better lives abroad. Although the passage on the cramped, dank ships caused many to arrive in the New World diseased and starving, those families that survived the trip often went on to make valuable contributions to those new societies to which they arrived. Early immigrants bearing the Dewalt surname or a spelling variation of the name include: