Larham - Name

This very rare and unusual name has two possible origins. The first and most likely is from an English placename, "Larham", which has now disappeared from the maps. This was a not uncommon phenomenon in 14th Century England, particularly, when whole villages were sometimes forcibly "cleared" to make room for the all important sheep pastures and their populations dispersed, taking with them their locational surnames. The placename meant "homestead or village built on clayey soil", from the Old Scandinavian word "leir", meaning "clayey" and the Olde English pre 7th Century "ham", meaning enclosure, village, settlement. The second possible origin is French, from the name "Larrumbe". A family of that name held lands in the 16th Century in "Guipuzcoa", in the Basque region. One William Larham married Susanna Eglington in January 1852 in St. Martin in the Fields, London. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Mary Larome, which was dated July 26th 1608, marriage to Richard Turner, at St. Margaret's, Westminster. during the reign of King James 1 of England and V1 of Scotland, 1603 - 1625. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was known as Poll Tax. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.