This unusual surname is of medieval Scottish origin, and is a dialectal variant of Kipp or Kype, itself a locational name from a minor place called Kype in the parish of Avondale, Lanarkshire, believed to be so named from the Gaelic "kip, ceap", tree-stock, stump. Locational surnames, such as this, were originally given to local landowners, and the lord of the manor, and especially as a means of identification to those who left their birthplace to settle elsewhere. Regional and dialectal differences subsequently produced several variations on the original spelling of the name, which in the modern idiom is found as: Kip, Kipp, Quip, Quipp and Quap. The interchange of the initial "K" and "Q" is further evidenced in such Gaelic Irish surnames as Kielty, also written as "Quilty", and Kinnane, occasionally written as "Quinane". One Janet Kype was noted in Records of Goislingtoun in the parish of Stanehous, Lanarkshire, in 1622, and on January 4th 1768, William Quip and Sarah Ratford were married at St. Leonard's, Shoreditch, London. On May 23rd 1861, the birth of Martha, daughter of Charles Quipp and Ann Simpson, was recorded in Bathgate, West Lothian, Scotland. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of William de Kype, which was dated 1301, in the "Register of the Abbey of Kelso", Roxburghshire, during the reign of During the Interregnum in Scotland, 1296 - 1306. 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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