Recorded as Bungay and Bungey, this is an English locational surname. It orginates from the little town of Bungay or Bungey in the county of Suffolk, recorded in the famous Domesday Book of 1086 as 'Bunghea'. The famous Victorian etymologist Canon Charles Bardsley writing in 1880 suggests that the place name has a religious association with the abbey of Bury St Edmunds, whilst the Oxford Dictionary of English Place Names indicates that the translation may be Buna's Island. If correct, this probably referred to an island in a fen, since Bungey is in the middle of the East Anglian fen country, and one occupied by a tribe of Britons called the Bunni. Locational surnames are often 'from' names. That is to say names given to people after they left their original homes to move somewhere else. In this case the first known recording is believed to be that of Jeffrey de Bungeye of Norfolk in the Hundred Rolls of 1273, whilst a John de Bongay was the rector of Hockwold, also in Norfolk, in 1385. An early example of a recording taken from surviving church registers is that of John Bungey, given as being a preacher, who married Margaret Parkes at St Antholin's church in the city of London, in 1561.

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