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As with many , Old and names, which have no obvious relation to each other, such as the Old Norse 'Arkle', composed of 'arn', eagle, and 'ketil', cauldron, many modern 'double-barrelled' names are the result of a marriage between two families in the past, and have no intrinsic meaning, although each element has its own separate meaning and derivation. In this instance 'Grafton' is a surname of origin from any of the numerous places so called, in Cheshire, Northants, Wiltshire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire, and Yorkshire, among others. The placename means "the settlement in the grove", derived from the Old English pre 7th Century 'graf', grove, and 'tun', settlement, enclosure. The surname from this source is first recorded as William Graftona, in the of Leicestershire of 1130.

List Ancestral records for:- Grafton-Herbert

'Herbert' derives from the Germanic composed of the elements 'heri', army, and 'berhy', bright, famous, which was introduced into Britain by the after the . The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of William Herebert, which was dated 1206, The Dorsetshire Pipe Rolls, during the reign of King John, known as '', 1199-1216. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was known as . Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing of the original spelling.
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