This is an English locational surname. Recorded in several spelling forms including: Beaddon, Bedenham, Beddingham, Bedinham and Bodenham, it originates from either 'a locality' near the town of Gosport in Hampshire, or from the village of Beddingham in Sussex. Bedenham may, in medieval times, have been a village or even a small town, in its own right. The National Monuments Record does not list any such place in Hampshire, but this is not surprising as the collation of the 'lost' village list only commenced in 1974, and almost all work carried out is voluntary. What is already known is that an estimated five thousand British and Irish surnames originate from places which are now completely lost, or have been 'submerged' into other places, and so have effectively lost their identity. The name means 'the place of the Beadda people', a pre 7th century Olde English tribe, who were well known in the south of England, and whose origins are also preserved in the villages of Beddingham and Beddington in Surrey. Early examples of the surname recording taken from authentic surviving church registers include: Elizabeth Bodenham, who married Andre Smyth at the church of St Gregory's by St Pauls, in the city of London, on April 20th 1567, Elinor Beaddon of Carisbrooke in the Isle of Wight, recorded there on October 27th 1580, and James Bedenham, a witness at St Pauls church, Deptford, in Kent, on March 14th 1806.

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