A Name with STYLE

A Name with STYLE

Winifred  STEGGALL has written from Reepham and thinks that the time is ripe for me to check out her unusual surname which has its local dialect to thank for the spelling.  This is not a Lincolnshire name but neither has not travelled very far over the years.  Originating in the Suffolk area it is a locational name.  There are somewhere in the region of twenty different spellings for STEGGALL and the only thing all these have in common is that they all start with ST and have an L in them. The spellings include STEGGLE, STECKEL, STYGLE and finally the one that it all started with, STILE.  One of the first references to the surname is in the 13th century and we find Reginald atte STIGHEL when the Old English stigol was the word for a stile  but took a century or three to get to the Middle English stegele  and eventually the surnames STYGLE and STYLE.  Reginald therefore was a dweller by the stile or steep ascent.  As you can see from the example I have given above, with a broad accent, they can all sound very similar and G is easily changed to a C sound. However as usual there is an alternative explanation.  The surname STILE might originally come from the Old English stiell which was a dweller near the place to catch fish..
The arrival of the new Lincolnshire Family History Society magazine brings with it the information that Mrs Smith of Lincoln has come across the family bible belonging to the SONDOR family.  Try as I might I can’t find this in my books.  Originally from Great Rissington which is not far from Oxford there can’t be many families with this name in Lincolnshire.  A search of the Surname Profiler gives no indication of where they came from because, as there are less than 100 in the country, they are nor picked up.  Still, a look at the 1881 should give a hint, however  I was out of luck here as well for there were none listed.  I shall have to have a more thorough search during the week. Watch this space.
The surname PINDARD below is a corruption of the occupational surname PINDER.  This was necessary work in the villages when the fields were less enclosed than they are today.  The stray animals would be rounded up and put into the pinfold under the care of the pinder who was a village officer and he would then charge for their release.  The name comes from the Old English word pyndan which was to impound or shut up.
Bits and Bobs
PINDARD, of Boston, plumber, for payment of 2s 6d a week and costs towards the maintenance of a bastard child belonging to Barnett SMITH......The case occupied the court for a considerable time, and involved a nice point, the woman having been married, and it was unknown whether her husband was living or dead. [A witness claimed he had seen the husband in Grimsby more than a year ago, and at the last Boston fair, but BS swore she hadn't seen him for two years & she had been informed he was killed on the railway near Syston] etc.