Recorded as Pilling, Pillington and Pellington, this is an English surname. It is locational from either Pilling, a village in the county of Lancashire near the town of Garstang, or Pillington a now "lost" medieval village near the town of Blackburn, also in Lancashire. In both cases the place names and the later surnames mean the people (-ing) who live at a place (-ton) by a small lake, from the Olde British word "pyl" meaning a pool. The surname is ancient, and well recorded from the 13th century. These early examples include Thomas Pillyng of Warwickshire who appeared in the Subsidy Tax Rolls of 1344, and Johannes de Pyllington in the Poll Tax register for the county of Yorkshire in 1379. Early church recordings include Samuel Pillington who married Anne Wright, at St James Clerkenwell in the city of London in 1673,and Martha Pellington who was christened at St Giles Cripplegate, also city of London, on May 14th 1701. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Adam Pilling. This was dated 1283, in the Pipe Rolls of Suffolk, during the reign of King Edward 1st of England, known as "The Hammer of the Scots", 1272 - 1307. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was sometimes known as the 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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