Recorded as Warland, Worland, Warlan and Warling, this is an English locational surname. Being locational implies that it comes from somewhere usually in the name spelling of at least one form of the surname. However this is not the case here, and whilst well recorded in the surviving church registers of the city of London, no trace of the place name has been found in any of the gazetters of the past three centuries. This is not unique but is still unusual. It has been claimed that well over three thousand surnames of the British Isles are believed to originate from now totally "lost" medieval villages of which the only surviving memory of the place is the surname itself, often as with this one, in a variety of spellings. The fact that the name is well recorded in the surviving church register of the city of London indicates that perhaps the original village was somewhere in the south of England, but even this is not certain. The village of Worle in Somerset apparently means the "Grouse wood" so possibly this name means the "Grouse land" which would seem logical. The surviving church reisters of the city of London have early examples of the recordings including Anne Worland christened at St Dunstans Stepney, on September 25th 1582, and Anthony Warland a christening witness at St Martins in the Field, Westminster, on February 10th 1680.

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