WOODFORD
Recorded variant spellings include Wood Ford
Woodford is a locational surname of English origin, first established in the British Isles during the early medieval period. It denotes a person who lived near or worked at a shallow crossing in a wooded area.
The name derives from the Old English words wudu meaning “wood” and ford meaning a shallow place in a river where it can be crossed. Thus, the literal sense of Woodford is “one who lived near or worked at the ford in the woods.” This formulation is consistent across all documented instances of the surname.
The surname is associated with several places called Woodford, Woodsford or variations thereof in England, including Cheshire, Cornwall, Wiltshire, Essex and Northamptonshire, as well as with lands in the parish of St. Boswells, Roxburghshire, Scotland. In each case the place name is itself a repetition of the Old English elements wuda (wood) and forda (ford or shallow crossing).
Records show that the earliest Scottish instance of the name appears in the latter half of the twelfth century. The first English bearer is recorded as Daniel de Wudeford in the 1196 pipe rolls of Oxfordshire. By the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, spellings such as Wodeforde and Wodeford appear in the Hundred Rolls of 1273 (Geoffrey de Wodeforde of Somerset) and in the 1581 register of students of Oxford University (Robert Wodeford of Buckingham).
In the early seventeenth century the surname spread beyond its original locales. On 1st June 1620, a christening was recorded at Saint James church, Clerkenwell, London, for Adryan, son of Emanuel Woodford. By 7th April 1631 Thomas Woodford emigrated from England to the Virginia Colony in North America, making him an early settler in what would become the United States.
Census data from 1881 place Woodford as the 17th most common surname across England and Ireland, with significant concentrations in Essex, Kent, Devon and Herefordshire. In the United Kingdom today the name remains more common in the Midlands, especially in Gloucestershire, Herefordshire and Warwickshire, and is also found in Scotland and Ireland. In the United States it ranks as the 706th most common surname, with strong presences in New Hampshire, Vermont and Kentucky, reflecting patterns of early English and Scotch‑Irish settlement.
Over the centuries the spelling of the surname has varied. Common forms include Woodforde, Woodsford, Wodford, Wadford, Woolford and Wudford. Pronunciation differences mirror these orthographic variants, but the core phonetic elements of the original Old English words remain recognisable.
Given its descriptive origin, the surname Woodford is associated historically with people who lived by or worked at a river crossing in a forested area. This connection to a particular landscape has contributed to the surname’s enduring presence across the United Kingdom and the wider diaspora.
Typical given names associated with the Woodford surname
Male
- Andrew
- David
- James
- John
- Mark
- Matthew
- Michael
- Paul
- Peter
- Stephen
Female
- Amanda
- Angela
- Catherine
- Claire
- Emma
- Jane
- Janet
- Jennifer
- Joanne
- Nicola
- Pauline
- Sarah
- Susan
Similar and related surnames
Related and similar names are generated algorithmically based on the spelling, and may not necessarily share an etymology.
How to communicate the surname Woodford in...
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Morse
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There are approximately 4,571 people named Woodford in the UK. That makes it roughly the 2,052nd most common surname in Britain. Around 70 in a million people in Britain are named Woodford.
Origin: English
Region of origin: British Isles
Country of origin: England
Religion of origin: Christian
Language of origin: English
Famous people named Woodford
- Michael Christopher Woodford - Former CEO of Olympus who exposed the Olympus scandal
- Kevin Woodford - Celebrity chef, television presenter, actor
- Edith Woodford-Grimes - An English Wiccan who achieved notoriety as one of the faith's earliest known adherents (1887 to 1975)
- James Woodford - Sculptor (1893 to 1976)
- George Woodford - Football player (1915 to 1966)
- Charles Morris Woodford - Naturalist (1852 to 1927)
- John Woodford - County cricketer
Names and descriptions courtesy of Wikipedia, and may contain errors. This is not intended to be an exhaustive list of every famous person with this name.