Evidence for the Name
In the absence of any original sources, I would like to offer some circumstantial evidence collected with respect to the name’s meaning and its place of origin that may be of interest to Family members. The Bible of Scottish names is George Black’s book ‘The Surnames of Scotland,’ he defines the place of origin as Tudhope, a farm on the hillside just above Jedburgh, Tud or Tudda’s enclosure. The language of the Borders had a large Anglo-Saxon content for many centuries, this was due to the importance of trade with England, not forgetting waves of Anglo-Saxon immigrants and that Anglo-Saxon and Norman kings periodically ruled the lowlands of Scotland.
Collecting spellings and pronunciations of our name is a reasonable approach, in Hawick in the past, it seems to have been pronounced ‘To-dop.’ In Jedburgh today, either ‘To-dop or Tood-op passes as the pronunciation. Tudhope Hill, eleven miles south of Hawick, is pronounced ‘Toot-op’ Hill - supplied by Douglas Elliot who grazes sheep on Tudhope Hill. It is this pronunciation that provides the correlation between Tudhope hill and the Toot hills, and suggests its meaning.
There are some 130 Toot hills the length and breadth of England. From the literature, consensus is that Toot hills or places are ‘Lookout’ positions; one author has suggested that these were a response to Viking raids, but in the Borders, it could be due to King Edward I. Another author has a list of ‘Toot’ lookout places which includes Tudhope Hill. Also, we have the thirty to forty spellings of our name that can be collected from the Internet, amongst them Tud-op, Tut-hop and Toot-op.
The full Oxford English Dictionary has a range of spellings for Toot hills:Tud, Tut, Tot, Tote and Toot, and each in its time was probably pronounced ‘Toot’. Compare these with the above names; and why Tud - because the ‘d’ at the end of a Germanic word has a ‘T’ sound, and the ‘U’ is the long ‘U’ with the sound of ‘oo’, hence Tud becomes Toot. If this is correct, then we have the meaning of the first element of our name: Tud = Lookout or Watchman.
The second element Hop(e) has the following spellings: Hope, Hop, Op, Up and Upp with the modern pronunciationof –Op. It can be considered as having two principal meanings: an enclosed field, or a small blind valley with a stream. This suggests that it may have entered the English language twice, once with the Anglo-Saxons and once with the Vikings. Fields cannot exist on their own, they are part of a farm or homestead, the language is Anglo-Saxon, therefore we can define Tudhope as: Tud+Hop(e) = Lookout’s Farmstead/ Croft.
Considering a list of names from the LDS, I suggest we can observe a change in pronunciation from Toot-hop to Toot-op: from Toot-op to Tood-op and the various ways in which these pronunciations have been spelt over the centuries by clerics. The ‘e’ was probably added in the Middle Ages.
I think we are on safe ground choosing the farm at Jedburgh as the place of origin for our surname, from there you can watch the ‘Carter Bar’, the English-Scottish Border crossing point,the importance of this cannot be over stated. The clear view across to the Cheviot Hills would have been of considerable importance to the town of Jedburgh for centuries in watching for invading armies. I suggest our surname would have been taken from the name of the farm around 1300AD.
As for Tudhope hill/Linn, these are not lookout hills, but are simply named after the Family members who once lived and farmed there from the 15th. century onwards.
There is quite a lot that has had to be left out, but I hope this has given you something to think about.
Les
More Replies:
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Re: Evidence for the Name
Katherine E. Pedersen 8/04/10
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Re - Re: Evidence for the Name
Les Toudup 9/09/10
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Re - Re: Evidence for the Name