This long-established northern English name is of Anglo-Saxon origin, and is either a locational surname, from a place called Sidebottom in Cheshire near Stockport, or a topographical name peculiar to the counties of Cheshire, Lancashire and Yorkshire. The derivation of the name is from the Olde English pre 7th Century "sid", wide, broad, spacious, and "bothm", valley, bottom, dell, and in the case of the topographical surname, this would denote residence in such a "wide valley". Topographical surnames were among the earliest created, since both natural and man-made features in the landscape provided easily recognisable distinguishing names in the small communities of the Middle Ages. One Thomas de Sidebotham is recorded in Earwaker's "History of East Cheshire" in 1400, and a Robert Sidbothom appears in a list of the "knights, gentlemen and freeholders in the Macclesfield Hundred" in 1445. Among the recordings of the name in Church Registers are the christening of Thomas Sidebotham, at St. Mary's, Stockport, Cheshire, on May 1st 1611, and the marriage of Richard Sidebotham and Elizabeth Backhouse, on October 16th 1629, at Rothwell in Yorkshire. The Coat of Arms most associated with the name depicts, on a blue shield, a silver chevron guttee de sang between two eagles displayed in chief and a garb in base, in the centre chief point a cross crosslet, all gold. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Hugh de Sidbothume, which was dated 1289, witness in the "Assize Court Rolls of Cheshire", during the reign of King Edward 1, known as "The Hammer of the Scots", 1272 - 1307. 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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