Recorded in many European countries and in many spellings which include Board, Boards, Boardman, Border (English & Scottish), Boord, Borde (Dutch & Flemish), Laborde, Bordes, Bordas, Bordis, Bourdel (French) Borda, Bordas, Laborda (Spanish & Portugese), and others, this is a surname which is probably of Old German or French origins. If the former it derives from the pre 7th Century word "bord", meaning a plank of wood, and as such was an occupational surname for a maker of planks and boards, whilst the latter derives from "bordure", a word which described the edge of a village or "borde", a house of timber standing alone. Natural and man-made features in the landscape provided obvious and convenient means of identification in the small communities of the Middle Ages, and consequently gave rise to many surnames. The final "s", when attached to a topographical name, denotes "dweller at (that place)". The earliest examples of the name recordings are in England and include Robert Bourde in the Subsidy Rolls of Somerset, dated 1323 and Anne Bordish, who married Roger Willson at the church of St Katherines by the Tower (of London) on December 7th 1609. Jeanne La Borde married Jean Siot at Montaut, Basses-Pyrenees, on July 5th 1634, whilst Pierre Bordes was a French Huguenot refugee, whose son Pierre was christened at the French Church, Glasshouse Street, in the city of London, on February 21st 1727. The first recorded spelling of the family name is believed to be that of Nicholas Borde. This was dated 1230, in the "Pipe Rolls" of the county of Dorset, during the reign of King Henry 111 of England , 1216 - 1272. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.

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