This unsual name is of English locational origin, from the place called "Marfleet" in Humberside near Hull in East Yorkshire. The name is Anglo-Saxon and is first recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 as "Mereflet" and by 1246 as "Merflet". The meaning is either the boundary stream, derived from the Olde English pre 7th Century "(ge)maere", a boundry, with "fleot", stream or the stream pond or lake from "mere" lake or pond with "fleot". The modern surname has three forms, Marfleet, Marflit and Marflitt, the latter two variants being found particularly in Yorkshire. One William Merflete is recorded as Mayor of Hedon, Yorkshire, in 1419. One Robert Marflitt married Jane Edden on the 11th February 1793 at Hutton Bushel, Yorkshire. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Adam de Merflete, which was dated 1135, The Yorkshire Pipe Rolls, during the reign of King Henry I, The Lion of Justice, 1100 - 1135. 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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