Recorded as Silston and Silstone, this is an English locational surname. It almost certainly originates from the village of the same name, in the county of Yorkshire, near the city of Sheffield. The village is first recorded in the famous Domesday Book of 1086 as Silchestone, and the translation according to the Oxford Dictionary of English place names is Sigels - tun, or literally the farm of Sigel, an early Saxon personal name of the pre 7th century a.d. However our research suggests another possible translation from the word sil. This usually described a defensive ditch or moat but could mean a canal, although these were not generally in use in the area until much later. The surname being locational is a "from" name. These were names given to people after they left their original homesteads to move somewhere else. The earliest example of a surname recording that we have been able to find in Yorkshire is that of Anne Silkstone who married Nicholas Adams at Rotherham, on July 31st 1672. The name appears in the city of London in the last year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth 1st (1558 - 1603), when Bethia Silkston was christened at the church of St Anne Blackfriars on March 1st of that year.

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