Recorded in several forms as shown below, this is an English surname. It is of early medieval origin, and is locational being found mainly in the West Country. However spelt it is said to derive from a contracted form of the placename 'Trevithick', or, as is often the case with Old Cornish surnames, from a now lost or unrecorded place, called Trevett or Trevitt. There are a number of places in Cornwall called Trevithick; in the parishes of St. Columb Major, Perranzabuloe, and St. Ewe, and all are so called from the Cornish word "tre" meaning homestead, with various suffix. Trevithick in St. Ewe is thought to contain as its second element a mutated form of the Cornish "methek", meaning doctor. The surname development includes: Helyas Tryvet in 1540, William Travett (1548), Mersella Trevet (1579) and Thomas Trevit (1619). John Trevett was christened at All Hallows church, in the city of Exeter, on September 19th 1626 and Abraham Trevitt married Catherine Ugloe at Lanhydrock, in Cornwall, on June 1st 1707. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of John Trivet. This was dated 1327, in the chraters of the county of Somerset, during the reign of King Edward 111rd of England, 1327 - 1377. 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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