This unusual name is of Anglo-Saxon origin, and a locational surname deriving from a place in Norfolk so called until the mid 13th Century, when the settlement was divided and thereafter named separately, from the holders of the land, as Framingham Earl, after the Earl of Norfolk, and Framingham Pigot, after Ralph Picot who held the estate in 1235. The original place was recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 as "Framingaham", and in the Norfolk Pipe Rolls of 1198 as "Fremingham", and derives its name from the Olde English pre 7th Century personal name "Fram", from "fram", valiant, with the suffix "-ing" indicating "people, tribe of", and "ham", settlement, enclosure, homestead, thus "the settlement of Fram's people". Locational surnames were acquired especially by those former inhabitants of a place who had moved to another area, and were thereafter best identified by the name of their birthplace. Recordings of the surname, found as Framingham and Frammingham, from Norfolk Church Registers, include the marriages of Francis Frammyngham and Joanna Norrys at Castle Rising, on November 18th 1591, and of Edward Frammingham and Mary Styleman in 1596, at Field Dalling. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Frannces Framyngham, which was dated November 17th 1538, a witness at the christening of his daughter, Elizabeth, at Kenton, Suffolk, during the reign of King Henry V111, known as "Bluff King Hal", 1509 - 1547. 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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