This interesting and unusual name is of Anglo-Saxon origin, and is a locational surname deriving from a now "lost" place, thought to have been situated in Nottinghamshire close to the border with Lincolnshire. An estimated seven to ten thousand villages and hamlets are known to have disappeared in England since the 12th Century, due to natural causes such as the Black Death of 1348, when an eighth of the population died, and also to the large-scale "clearing" of many rural areas for sheep pastures during the boom in the wool trade of the 14th and 15th Centuries. The placename "Dallywater" means "the valley of the stream or lake", derived from the Old English pre 7th Century elements "dael", or the Old Norse "dalr", since Nottinghamshire was one of the areas of Scandinavian settlement, valley, with the Old English "waeter", lake, stream. The surname development includes (in Nottinghamshire): Dalliwater (1599), Dallewater (1614), Dalliwate (1615) and Delwater (1621). The marriage of Mary Dallywater and Richard Honer was recorded at Hawton, Nottinghamshire, on January 21st 1665. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Margareta Dallywater (christening), which was dated August 24th 1592, in Dunsby by Bourne, Lincolnshire, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth 1, known as "Good Queen Bess", 1558 - 1603. 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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