This uncommon surname is one of a handful of surnames surviving that were derived from the name of the first bearer's mother. The derivation, in this instance, is from the medieval female given name "Malin", a diminutive of "Mal(le), itself a pet form of Mary, believed to come from the Aramaic "Maryam", Hebrew "Miryam", meaning "Wished for Child". St. Jerome understood it as a compound of "mar", drop, and "ham", sea, which he rendered as "stilla maris" (Latin), later altered to "stella maris", star of the sea. This was the name of the mother of Christ in the New Testament, and the earliest example noted in Britain is Mary, second daughter of Malcolm 11 of Scotland, and St. Margaret, born circa 1082. The subsequent popularity of the name gave rise to a wide variety of diminutive and pet forms including: Marion, Mall, Moll and Marriot. "Malina" (without surname) was recorded in the 1212 Curia Regis Rolls of Nottinghamshire, and in 1273, a Malin Gogun was noted in the Hundred Rolls of Oxfordshire. John Malin appears in the 1297 Subsidy Rolls of Yorkshire, and on January 8th 1858, Walter, son of James Lloyd Malins, was christened at Pentonville, London. A Coat of Arms granted to the Malins family is a black shield with two red palets on a gold fess, the Crest being an arm in armour proper, grasping a gold crescent. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of John Malynes, which was dated 1358, in Putnam's "Enforcement of the Statutes of labourers", Warwickshire, during the reign of King Edward 111, known as "The Father of the Navy", 1327 - 1377. 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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