Apparently recorded in a number of spellings including Baddow, Baddoe, Baddough, Boddough, Buddough, Buddock, Bodocs, and Bottaughe, this is probably an English locational surname. It would seem to originate either from the village of Budock in Cornwall named after the 9th century St. Budock, or for some nameholders from a place in the county of Essex called Baddow, first recorded in the year 1000 a.d. as Beadewan, and later in the famous Domesday Book of 1087 as Badueen. The meaning is obscure, but is probably from a first name such as Badda, followed by a prefix such as the Olde English pre 7th century 'hlaw' meaning a hill. Locational surnames were amongst the first to be granted, and were particularly given to people who had left their original home to move somewhere else. Spelling through the centuries being at best erratic, and local dialects very thick, soon lead to the development of 'sounds like' spellings some very remote from the original form. In this case examples of recordings taken from early surviving church registers of the city of London include those of Lawrence Bottaughe, a witness at the church of St Dunstans in the East, Stepney, on February 27th 1624, and that of Susanna Buddock, who married Daniel Balls at St Botolphs Bishopgate, in the city of London, on November 6th 1777.

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