Derived from the middle English "Tide-Way". The name is a job descriptive, dialectual transposition and means "a person responsible for checking in goods on the tide" i.e. a Customs official or Harbour Master of sorts. The name like the job, is very rare, although it has one recording in the National Biography as, Thomas Tudway, who was professor of Music at Cambridge University and compiled with Lord Oxford, one of the first collections of Church Music. The modern spellings include Tudway, Todway and Tudgay, the Coat of Arms, being, A Red Lion Rampant on an Ermine field, charged with Three Blue Roses. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Thomas Tudway, Canon of Windsor. which was dated 1672, Wells, Somerset. during the reign of King Charles II, The Merry Monarch, 1660 - 1685. 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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