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  Crossfield Family Crest / Crossfield Coat of ArmsThe surname of CROSSFIELD was a locational name 'the dweller at the field that lay crosswise' a North Lancashire surname. Local names usually denoted where a man held his land, and indicated where he actually lived. The name was originally derived from the Old English word CROSSFELD. Early records of the name mention John Crowchefylde of Lancashire, documented during the reign of Edward IV (1461-1483). Willliam Crosfeild of Poulton, Lancashire, was listed in the Lancashire Wills in 1618. Thomas Lawe married Mary Crosfeild at St. James's, Clerkenwell, London in the year 1655. Over the centuries, most people in Europe have accepted their surname as a fact of life, as irrevocable as an act of God, however much the individual may have liked or disliked the surname, they were stuck with it, and people rarely changed them by personal choice. A more common form of variation was in fact involuntary, when an official change was made, in other words, a clerical error. Among the humbler classes of European society, and especially among illiterate people, individuals were willing to accept the mistakes of officials, clerks and priests as officially bestowing a new version of their surname, just as they had meekly accepted the surname they had been born with. In North America, the linguistic problems confronting immigration officials at Ellis Island in the 19th century were legendary as a prolific source of Anglicization. Habitation names were originally acquired by the original bearer of the name, who, having lived by, at or near a place, would then take that name as a form of identification for himself and his family. When people lived close to the soil as they did in the Middle Ages, they were acutely conscious of every local variation in landscape and countryside. Every field or plot of land was identified in normal conversation by a descriptive term. If a man lived on or near a hill or mountain, or by a river or stream, forests and trees, he might receive the word as a family name. Almost every town, city or village in early times, has served to name many families. |
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