Recorded in the spellings of Stadden, Staddin, Stadding, Staddon, and Staddom, this is an English locational surname from villages in the county of Devon. These places were originally recorded as 'Stoddun', and derived from the Old English pre 7th Century elements "stod", meaning a horse stud, and "dun", a hill. Locational surnames were usually given to people when they left their original homes and moved elsewhere. The further they moved, usually the more corrupted the spelling, at a time when education was almost non-existent and local dialects, very thick. In this case early recordings of the surname from surviving church registers include Alice Staddon, the daughter of John Staddon, who was christened on August 20th 1605, at Tiverton; and the christening of Grace, the daughter of Peter Stadden, on July 26th 1610, at Hennock; on November 14th 1615, and James Stadding who married Alice Andrews at St Martin Pomeroy in the city of London, on December 29th 1631. The first recorded spelling of the family name may be that of Christopher Stedon, who married Ibot Hayman, on September 16th 1586. This took place at Branscombe, Devon, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth 1, "Good Queen Bess", 1558 - 1603. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.