Recorded as Send, Sends, Sendley and originally Sendlye, this is a rare English surname. It is apparently locational from some lost or unrecorded place, unless it be either of the two villages called Send in the county of Surrey. These were recorded as "Sande" in the famous Domesday Book of 1086, and as Sendan a century earlier. According to the Oxford Dictionary of English Place Names, send does or did mean "sand," and therefore Sendley would mean "The sandy enclosure" from the Olde English pre 7th century word "leah" meaning a cultivated area in a forest. Locational surnames are usually "from" names. That is to say names given as easy identification to a person who had left his or sometimes her, former village to move somewhere else. Spelling being at best erratic and local dialects very thick, soon lead to the ceation of "sounds like" forms. In this case the surname is recorded in the surviving church registers of the city of London in Elizabethan times. The first such recording being that of Richard Sendlye whose son John was christened at St Andrews Enfield, in Middlesex, on November 19th 1598, whilst Anthony Send or Sends was a witness at St Olaves Southwark, in the city of London, on January 30th 1647.

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