This interesting and unusual name, recorded in English church registers from the late 16th Century, under the variant spelling Gusticke, Gostyke, Gasicke etc., is believed to be a dialectal variant of Goswick, a place in Northumberland. This place, recorded as Gossewic in the 1202, Fine Court Rolls of that county, is so called from the Old English pre 7th Century "gos" meaning "goose", plus "wic", a farm. The surname from this source first appears on record in the late 13th Century, (see below). One, Roger de Goswyc purchased land in the tenement of Lambirtone in the reign of Robert 1, (1306 - 1329). On May 5th 1588, Susan Gusticke and John Newman were married in St. Mary Somerset, London and in February 1580, Marye Gostyke, an infant was christened in St. Margaret's Westminster. Elizabeth Gosicke and John Hall were married in Earsdon, Northumberland, on June 4th 1594, and on August 30th 1620, Ever Gostick was christened in St. Botloph without Aldgate, London. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of walter de Goswyke, bailiff of Berwick, which was dated 1297, in the "Calendar of Documents relating to Scotland", during the reign of Interregnum in Scotland, 1296 - 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.