Recorded as Tetlow and more rarely Titlow, this is an English surname. It is locational from either the hamlet of Tetley near Crowe in Humberside, or from Titley, a village near Kington in Herefordshire. The derivation is from the Olde English pre 7th century personal name "Taeta", or its Norse cognomen "Teitr", from a vocabulary term meaning "cheerful", with "leah", meaning a wood, or a clearing in a wood. Titley in Herefordshire is recorded as "Titellege" in the Domesday Book of 1086, and as "Titelea" in the Pipe Rolls of the county in 1194. The name means "Titta's wood or glade", from the personal name "Titta", with leah, as before. Locational surnames were acquired especially by those former inhabitants of a place who had moved to another area, usually in search of work, and who were thereafter best identified by the name of their birthplace; this ensured a wide dispersal of the name, and subsequent regional and dialectal differences in spelling. The modern surname can be found as Tetley, Titley, Tetlow, and Titlow. Cheshire Church Registers record the christening of Edward Tytlow in Chester, on December 18th 1583, and the marriage of Sara Tetlow to Robert Marshall in Mottram in Longdendale, in June 1656. One Nicholas Tetloe was an early emigrant to the American Colonies, leaving London on the "Speedwell" in May 1635, bound for Virginia. The first recorded spelling in church registers isa probably that of Thomas Tyttelegh. This was dated 1539, in the Parish Records of East Cheshire, during the reign of King Henry V111th of England, 1509 - 1547. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.

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