Re: Need help with surname, Halewood----more info--Kay & all

What we surname experts call "locative" names - either topographic
(based on landscape features) or toponymic (based on actual place
names) are a major source of a great many surnames in England -
though perhaps less so in Scotland, Wales and Ireland where the
patronymic system (names from a father or, more rarely, a mother) is
more influential. Locative surnames and occupatioal names (based on
jobs) are the most common groups in England.

Halewood (a place in Cheshire) and Peckham (Surrey and Kent) appear
to be locative surnames. However, you should understand that surnames
were mostly formed many centuries ago in the Middle Ages and a name
sometimes didn't become a hereditary surname until a holder had left
that place and moved elsewhere.

Phil C....

I suspect the name wouldn't have been ascribed at all unless the
holder moved away from his home village - otherwise it would have been
pointless as a way of distinguishing him.

Bishop comes from a different group of surnames based on nicknames.
It does NOT, BTW, mean you descend from a real bishop! It was a
nickname given either to someone who had played the role in a medieval
pageant or to a person who looked distinguished or who was thought to
go around preaching at folks like a bishop.

Phil C....

Or he may simply have lived on land held by the bishop or been his
servant or come from a place with Bishop in its name etc - anything
that might distinguish him from others of the same forename. These
things can never be proved but I (boringly) lean towards mundane
origins for nearly all surnames. I think our ancestors' tendency for
irony is much overrated.