Recorded as Palbrook, Pulbrook, Pulbrooke and possibly others, this is an English locational surname. It orginates either from a place called Pullbrook, which if it ever existed seems to do so no longer, or more probably it is a tranposition of the spelling of the well known market town of Pulborough in Sussex. The name in both spellings has essentially the same meaning of "The hill by the water", so this does not help us. Locational surnames are "from" names. That is to say names given to people after they left their original villages to live somewhere else. Spelling over the centuries being at best erratic, and local dialects very thick, often lead to the development of "sounds like" surnames. Pulborough is recorded as Polberg in the famous Domesday Book of England in 1086. Early examples of recordings include John Palbrooke whose son Edward was christened at the church of St Lawrence Jewry in the city of London on September 16th 1546, and two centures later that of Thomas Pulbrook whose daughter Elizabeth Mary was christened at Holborn lying in hospital, Endell Street, on August 10th 1755.

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