Brickenden Surname
The following are some thoughts about the origin of the Brickenden surname. Please note that this is a collection of
various musings - it should not be used for academic purposes. Additional thoughts and ideas are more than welcome.
All of the Brickenden families seem to originate from Brickendens who lived in the County of Kent in England.
The Weald of Kent where the family orginate was largely woodland and forest. Many years later this area was a prime source
of timber for ship building. The Domesday book lists a number of Dennes in the Weald, but not one called Brickenden. So it
must be assumed that it would have arisen later or have been too small to list seperately. These Dennes were clearings in
what was then a wilderness and were often owned by towns elsewhere in Kent giving a valuable agricultural base for the town.
The spelling of the name can be expected to change over the years and early versions are often Brekynden and might have
included Brekingden. There is a possible location for the origin of the name somewhere near the village of Biddenden.
According to Dione Dover,
"Biddenden (Bidingden) circa 993 means "Woodland pasture associated with a
man called 'Bieda'. It's Old English person's name plus 'ing' plus 'den'.
Denn is OE for ford (crossing place over stream/river). Ing was probably a
useful way of linking the two syllables without causing paralysis of the
tongue thru glottal stops.
I should be fairly surprised to find Brickenden is a derivative of Biddenden,
the words are so completely different and whilst we have no way of definitely
knowing how these were pronounced, recent studies have concluded modern
Celtic is probably the closest to OE. These studies are ongoing at where
else, Oxford (& Sussex) University. I caught a radio programme about two
weeks ago where one of the speakers held a conversation in what was perceived
to be about the right pronounciation. It had no resemblance at all to the
way we speak today.
Consistent throughout the ages, the phonetic version of Brickenden has
survived in whatever spelling guise, so although it probably did not spring
whole & perfect into being in the 15th. century, it's unlikely to be a
derivative of Bid.......I should look for a place, or person, extant nearby
beginning Bry or Bryn. Interestingly, Bryn is a Celtic name. You'll have
noticed from the Wills how the name steadily altered as time passed. There's
no reason to suppose this wasn't happening prior to the first Brykenden on
the list. My belief that Brickenden, as with most of our English names,
adapted the spellings to conform to the phonetics of the period. As we come
close to what is now known as "received English", (aka BBC) with the
increasing standard of education from the 18th. century, standardisation
creeps in."
This would thus be the den of Brick
or perhaps in modern
English - Bricks farm. This would later give rise to names such as John of Bricks farm or John Brickenden.
To give a broad brush historical background. The South East corner of Englans was the home to the Cantii tribe, who had
their capital at Canterbury - hence the origins of the names Kent and Canterbury (town of the Cantii). Invaded and conquered
by the Romans under Julius Ceasar, it went through a quieter period for a few hundred years until the first waves of invasion
by the Angles and Saxons. This area became settled by various Angle and Saxon tribes displacing the natives.
At the turn of the Millennium, the
country was again invaded, this time by the Normans. Like the Romans before them, this was not a resettlement of the natives
but the establishment of a new heirarchy. For almost a millennium, Kent has now been a stable county, but
Kent is however the closest part of England to Europe and has thus
always been the most cosmopolitan, with refugees and immigrants settling in the area.