This rare name is of Anglo-Saxon origin, and is a variant form of the locational surname deriving from any one of the places in England called Hatfield, although the most likely sources are those in Herefordshire and Worcestershire. There are also places called Hatfield in the counties of Essex, Hertfordshire, Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire. atfield in Worcestershire is recorded in the Saxon Cartulary of 892 as "Hethfeld", and in the Subsidy Rolls of the county of 1275 as "Hathfeld", while the place in Herefordshire appears as "Hetfelde" in the Domesday Book of 1086. All of these places are named from the Olde English pre 7th Century "haeth", heathland, heather, and "feld", pasture, open country. Locational surnames were acquired by the lord of the manor, and local landowners, and especially by those former inhabitants of a place who had moved to another area, usually in search of work, and who were thereafter best identified by the name of their birthplace. Regional dialectal differences subsequently gave rise to variant spellings of the surname, as in Hatfield, Het(h)field and Hutfield. Examples of the surname from Church Registers include: the christening of Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Hatfield, at Durnford, Wiltshire, on October 2nd 1636, and the christening of John, son of Henry Hutfeild, at St. Olave's, Southwark, London, on May 14th 1643. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Tata aet (at) Haethfelda, which was dated circa 1050, in "Records of Old English Bynames" (Tengvik), during the reign of Edward the Confessor, King of England, 1042 - 1066. 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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