This Old German surname has a long history which includes two possible origins. It derives either from the pre 7th Century Norse-Viking personal name "Aslake", which also appears in the English surname Haslock(e)", or may be habitational for one who lived or worked by swampy ground. In either case the "H" prefix would appear to be intrusive and of medieval origins. It is one of the oddities of surname spellings, that for every name that gained a "H", another lost it - as in "Horseman" to "Orsman". In England the name (as a personal name) appears on many occasions in the 1086 Domesday Book, but the first German surname recordings do not appear for a further five hundred years. This is probably as a result of records being destroyed in war, which is sadly the case with many Continental names. Name recordings include Phillip Hasslocher who married Anne Barbara Meyers on June 30th 1711, at Queichbein, Psalz, Bayern, Germany. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Margaret Hasslocher, which was dated christened on April 30th 1664 at Diedesfeld, Psalz Bayern, during the reign of Emperor Leopold 1 of the Holy Roman empire, 1658 - 1705. 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.