Recorded as Warter, Warters and Worters, this is an English surname. It is often confused with the popular surnames Waters or Walters, although there does not seem to be any logical connection. It is locational from a place called Warter near the small town of Pocklington, to the east of the city of York. The famous cry of the medieval criminal classes "From Hell, Hull and Halifax, may the good lord protect me", should have included Warter, even if it did not scan too well, because the name originates from the Olde English pre 7th century word "weartreo" meaning the gibbet or gallow tree! The village is first recorded in the Domesday Book for the county of Yorkshire in 1086 as "Wartre" and later as "Wartra", so much for early spelling, whilst the surname is first recorded in 1219 when Robert de Warter, lived upto his name and appeared in the York Assizes for that year, although we have no record of either his crime or sentence. Later recordings include Roger Warters of Suffolk in 1637, with the final "s" being used with a locational name, not as a patronymic short form of "son", but to emphasise one who came from a particular place.

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