Recorded in several spelling forms including Tid, Tidd, Tidder and Tydd, this interesting surname is of pre 8th century Anglo-Saxon origins. It has two possible origins. Firstly, it may be a form of Tidman. This word which was also used as a personal name, was composed of the elements "tid" meaning time or season, and "man", which may have different meanings according to the particular circumstances. A tidman was a status name for the head of a tithing (a group of ten households). According to the medieval system of "frank pledge", every member of tithing was responsible for every other, so that for example if one of them committed a crime the others had to help pay for it. The name may also be of locational origins from the two villages called Tydd in Cambridgeshire and in Lincolnshire. This would be the origin of the name as "Tidder", describing a person who lived at "Tid" in Lincolnshire, as shown in the Domesday Book of 1086. The placename derives from the Old English "titt", meaning a teat, and used here in a transferred sense of a slight hill. As it happens and in proof of the surname origin, both villages are on a slight rise in low-lying country. The first recorded spelling of the surname is shown to be that of Thomas de Tid. This was dated 1273, in the Hundred Rolls of Cambridgeshire, during the reign of King Edward 1st of England, 1272 - 1307. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.

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