This unusual name, found almost exclusively in Lancashire, is of Anglo-Saxon origin, and is a locational surname deriving from the place called Standen or Standing near Clitheroe in Lancashire. The placename is first recorded in the "Lancashire Inquests" of 1258 as "Standen", and is derived from the Olde English pre 7th Century "stan", stone, stones, with "dun", hill; hence, "stony hill". The surname Standring, also found as Standing, Standering, and Stannering, may also derive from a now "lost" place, thought to have been situated on the Lancashire and Yorkshire border, called Stannering, and named with the Olde English "stan", stone(s), with the suffix "-ing(as)", people, tribe; hence "(place of) the people of the stones". An estimated seven to ten thousand villages and hamlets have disappeared in Britain since the 15th Century, due to agricultural clearance and such natural disasters as the Black Death of 1348, during which an eighth of the population perished. Recordings of the surname and its variants in Lancashire Church Records include: Mary Standeringe (1606), and James Stanndringe (1608). The marriage of Samuel Standring and Mary Wolfenden was recorded in Rochdale, Lancashire, on May 15th 1683. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Elizabeth Stannaring, which was dated February 15th 1563, christened at Middleton by Oldham, Lancashire, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth 1, known as "Good Queen Bess", 1558 - 1603. 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.