Recorded in many forms including Gidden, Giddens, Gidding, Giddings, Gedding, Geddings, Gittens, Gittins, Gutans, Guttans, Gutten, Guttens, and possibly others, this is an English surname. It is either locational from the places called Gidding in Huntingdonshire and Gedding in Suffolk or it is from the pre 7th century Anglo-Saxon and Germanic name Gydda or Gudda. The place names are both recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 as "Geddinge", and share the same meaning and derivation. This is "the place of the Gudda people" to which was added the Old English suffix "-ingas", meaning "people or family of". Locational surnames were usually 'from' names. That is to say names given particularly to former inhabitants of a place who moved to live in another area. Given that spelling was at best rudimentary and dialects very thick, this often lead, as with this name, to the development of 'sounds like' spellings, some far removed from the original source. Early examples of recordings include on December 13th 1640, Thomas Giddens who was christened at Abington Pigotts, Cambridge, Elizabeth Geddins who was christened on August 11th 1683, at St. Botolph's Bishopsgate in the city of London, and John Gutten who married Mary Bayley at Topsham in Devon, on October 17th 1710. The first recorded spelling of the family name is believed to be that of John de Geddingge. This was dated 1273, in the Hundred Rolls of Suffolk, during the reign of King Edward 1st of England, and known as "The Hammer of the Scots", 1272 - 1307.

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