This most interesting and unusual surname is of English medieval origin. It is believed to be tribal and locational, however there is no such place recorded as either Shrempton or Shrimpton, the modern forms of the spelling. This suggests that the name originates either from a now 'lost' medieval village, which is quite possible as some three thousand English surnames are from such sources, or it is a developed form of something else. If the latter we have not been able to establish any definitive link with any modern town or village. Curiously the Shrimpton family have a coat of arms as shown below, so clearly they had distinction in the past. The name suggests a meaning such as 'The Scira settlement ' with Scira being an early personal name meaning 'The fair one', and possibly a reference to a Dane. It is unclear as to when the surname was first recorded, but it does seem to be from the Buckinghamshire region. Two early examples from the surviving records of the Elizabethan period include Joane Shrempton who married Henry Brone on February 13th 1564, at Little Missenden, Buckinghamshire, and Agnes Shrimpton who married Thomas Challenger on June 26th 1570 at Waddesdon, also Buckinghamshire. A coat of arms granted to the Shrimpton family has the blazon of an azure field charged with two bars between six leopards' faces, three, two and one, all gold. 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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