This very unusual and interesting name has an English locational origin, from the Harrow area of the Old county of Middlesex. It appears to be an example of a not uncommon phenomenon in the history of English places and their locational surnames, the "lost" village, where the place has disappeared from the maps and the surname is all that remains. Villages were sometimes forcibly cleared in the 14th Century to make room for sheep pastures and their inhabitants dispersed. Natural disasters such as the "Black Death" of 1348 also caused many villages and hamlets to be deserted. The name was probably "Bucc-brerd", from the Old English pre 7th Century "bucc" male deer and "brerd", hillside. There are many 16th and 17th Century recordings of the name in Harrow, among them "Agnes Bugberds" christened 1564 Harrow on the Hill. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Bugbird\Bugbeard (forenames not recorded). which was dated c.1315 - 1316, Middlesex Court Rolls. during the reign of King Edward II, Edward of Caernafon, 1307 - 1327. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was 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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