Recorded as Wigfall and Wigfield this is an English surname. It is locational from a now 'lost' medieval village or villages, which according to the famous Victorian etymologist Canon Charles Bardsley, was in the West Riding of Yorkshire as the surname is well recorded there. If so the origination is for Wigfall the farm (wic) by the waterfall (feall), from the pre 7th century Olde English 'wic- feall', whilst Wigfield name be a dialectal from the same source or from 'wic feld' meaning the farm by the open country, not the same meaning as the later field. During the Middle Ages, when it became more common for people to migrate further afield to seek work outside their locality, they would often adopt the placename as a means of identification, thus resulting in a wide dispersal of the name. Early examples of the surname from surviving charters and church registers include Johannes Wigfall of York in the Poll Tax rolls of 1379, the burial of Henry Wigfall at St Michael's Cornhill, in the city of London on March 1st 1654, and the marriage of George Wigfield and Hannah Turner on June 13th 1694, at Wentworth, in Yorkshire. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Henry de Wigfall. This was dated 1332, in the Curia Regis rolls of landowners of Yorkshire, during the reign of King Edward 111rd, 1327 - 1377. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.

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