Kettlewell Name Meaning

What’s in a name?

The surname Kettlewell is of Anglo-Saxon origin, and is a locational name from a place in North Yorkshire (formerly the West Riding of Yorkshire).

Originally it was recorded as “Chetelewelle” (or Cheteleuuelle) in the Domesday Book of 1086, as “Keteluella” in Yorkshire Charters, dated 1173, and as “Ketelwell” in the 1222 Feet of Fines for that county.

The name derives from a Scandinavianized form of the Olde English pre 7th Century cetel, meaning “deep valley”, with well(a) meaning “spring” or “stream”.

In 1686, Kettlewell and the neighbouring village Starbotton were almost destroyed in a flood.

Locational surnames were originally given to local landowners, and the lord of the manor, and especially to those former inhabitants who left their place of origin to live and work in another area.

Early examples of the surname include John Ketelwel and Alessander Katelwell, noted in the 1379 Poll Tax Returns Records of Yorkshire. On January 5th 1563, Joseph Kettlewell and Margaret Sandeman were married in Settrington, Yorkshire, and on June 12th 1565, John Kettlewell married an Elizabeth Bellingham in Chipping Barnet, Hertfordshire.

The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Stephen de Ketelwelle, which was dated 1272, in the “Records of Yorkshire”, 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.

Notable bearers of the name were:

John Kettlewell (1653 – 1695), devotional writer, and tutor of Lincoln College, Oxford, where he received an M.A. in 1677

Samuel Kettlewell (1822 – 1839), a licentiate of theology, Durham, 1848, M.A., 1860 and D.D., 1892. His publications include works on Thomas a Kempis and other theological writings.

Dame Marion Mildred Kettlewell DBE (b. 1914), British naval officer, Director of the Wrens (1966-1970)

Henry Bernard Davis Kettlewell (1907-1979), British geneticist, lepidopterist and medical doctor, known for Kettlewell’s experiment, a study into light colored European peppered moths in the late 1940s and 1950s