This long-established name is of Anglo-Saxon origin, and is a locational surname deriving from the place called Saintbury near Broadway in Gloucestershire. The placename is recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 as "Svineberie"; as "Seinesbir'" in the 1203 Curia Rolls of Gloucestershire; and as "Seineburia" in the 1220 Book of Fees. The name means "Saewine's fort or (fortified) manor", derived from the Olde English pre 7th Century male personal name "Saewine", composed of the elements "sae", sea, and "wine", friend, with "burg, burh", fort, often a pre-Roman site, and later usually referring to a fortified manor or town. Locational surnames were acquired by the lord of the manor, and local landowners, and were used particularly as a means of identification by those who left their birthplace to settle elsewhere. The modern surname forms from the original placename are Saintsbury, Sainsbury, Sainsberry and Sinisbury, and among the recordings of the name in Church Registers are those of the marriages of William Sainsbury and Agnes Janson at Bratton in Wiltshire, on October 27th 1592, and of John Sainsbury and Elizabeth Manings on November 22nd 1607, at St. Margaret's, Westminster, London. The family Coat of Arms depicts six red estoiles on a silver shield. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Reginald de Seinesberia, which was dated 1190, in the "Pipe Rolls of Gloucestershire", during the reign of King Richard 1, known as "Richard the Lionheart", 1189 - 1199. 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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