This surname is of early medieval English origin, and is a locational name from Tremelling, a place in the parish of St. Erth, Cornwall, so called from the Cornish "tre", homestead, settlement, and "melyn", mill. Names from places of residence are the most prolific of Cornish surnames, and an old rhyme reads "by Tre-(settlement), Pol-(pool) and Pen-(head or end), Ye may know most Cornish men". Locational surnames, such as this, were originally given to local landowners, and the lord of the manor, and especially as a means of identification to those who left their birthplace to settle elsewhere. The surname makes an interesting early appearance in the central English county of Staffordshire (see below). It takes the forms Tremelling, Tremellin, Tremellen, Tremline and Tremlyn in Church Registers of Cornwall dating from the late 16th Century; recordings include the christening of Margarett, daughter of James Tremellyn, at St. Erth in 1569; the christening of one Jane Tremellin in the same parish, on November 21st 1601, and the marriage of Sarah Tremelling to Richard Martyn in Redruth, on July 18th 1767. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of William Tremillin, which was dated 1273, in the "Hundred Rolls of Staffordshire", during the reign of King Edward 1, known as "The Hammer of the Scots", 1272 - 1307. 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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