Wearing - Name

This unusual surname is of early medieval English origin, and derives from the Norman personal name "Warin", itself coming from the Germanic element "war(in" meaning "guard". The name was popular in France and among the Normans in the forms Guerin and Warin, partly as a result of the fame of the Carolingian lay "Guerin de Montglave", and it was the Normans who introduced the name into England after the Norman Conquest of 1066. One Robertus filius (son of) Warin was recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 for Cambridgeshire, and a Robert Warin was noted in the 1198 Curia Regis Rolls of Yorkshire. In the modern idiom the name has seven spelling variations: Wareing, Warin(g), Warring, Wearing, Wharin and FitzWarin, with Guerin being widespread in Ireland. On December 10th 1635, John Wearing and Elizabeth Nelson were married at St. Gregory by St. Paul, London. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of John Waryng, which was dated 1275, in the "Subsidy Rolls of Worcestershire", during the reign of King Edward 1, known as "The Hammer of the Scots", 1272 - 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.