Recorded in several spellings as shown below, this is an English surname. It is locational rom either Birdsall, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, or Buerdsall, a place in the parish of Rochdale in Lancashire. The former, recorded as Briteshale or Brideshala in the Domesday Book of 1086, derives from the pre 7th Century byname "Bridd", meaning bird, and "-halh", a nook, recess; the second place in Lancashire, originally spelt as Berdeshull in the chaters know as the records of Pleas in 1292, means Bridd's hill. During the Middle Ages, when migration for the purpose of job-seeking was becoming more common, people often took their former village name as a means of identification, often resulting in a wide dispersal of the name, and given the erratic spelling and thick dialects, a steady growth in "sounds like" spellings. These are known to include Beardshall, Beardsell, Bearshale, Beardshaw, Birdshall, Birsell, and no dount others. Early examples of the recordings taken from church registers include the christening of Agneta Beardshall at Silkstone, Yorkshire, on February 7th 1574, Richardi Beardshaw, also recorded as Beardmore, a christening witness at Kingsley in Staffordshire, on April 1st 1599, and the christening of Ann Beardsall, on April 22nd 1607, at Wath Upon Dearne. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Robert de Birdsall. This was dated 1379, in the Poll Tax Returns of Yorkshire, during the reign of King Richard 11nd, 1377 - 1399. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was sometimes known as Poll Tax. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.

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