Rattenbury Family History and One-Name Study
Welcome to a website about Rattenburies, and thank you rootsweb for the free
hosting. This will grow over time. To begin with it is to publish some results from my
one-name study which may interest any researcher with a branch having surname
like:
RATTENBURY
ROTTENBURY
RADDENBURY
RODENBY
ROTHENBURY
BATTENBURY
RATTLEBURY
RATYNBERE
RETTENBURY
RATENABRY
RITTENBURY
RODDENBERRY
ROTTENBOROUGH
RUTENBERG
VAN RADENBOROUGH
There are many variant spellings, over a hundred including the combinations created by transcribers in the last few years. In this shortlist the most frequent are at the top.
The vital results are in this downloadable file - around 600KB.
RATTENBURY_multiple_event_index_Jun07.csv
Download and enjoy. For a better understanding you may wish to read
rattenbury_multiple_event_index_notes.pdf
ORIGIN OF NAME
It is generally agreed that this surname derives from a location.
But which location?. Well the location is the place where the name is first
recorded. That’s easy it’s a rare name. But the earliest recordings of this name
are in Devon, England and there, is almost nowhere with this name.
Almost nowhere?. Well there is a little farm located a mile
south-east of Marhamchurch, in north Cornwall. Today just the original farmhouse
carries that name. The oldest parts of this wooden-framed building are from the
early 16th C and at this time Rattenbury also started to appear in
the Marhamchurch Parish Register. Its marvellous that this building has survived
for so long and that the name hasn’t changed. But the conclusion in this case is
that the farm was named after the occupant. Not the other way around.
See:
There are two other cases
- the lost village case – the person came from a village which no longer exists
- the migrant case – the person came from a foreign town.
Linguistically both cases are possible.
The lost village case is described by the surname website
www.surnamedb.com.
“This is an English locational surname. It is believed to originate from a now "lost" medieval village situated
near the little town of Hatherleigh in the county of Devonshire.”
“The place in Somerset called Rodden, recorded as "Reddene" in
the Domesday Book of 1086, and as "Radena" in the Pipe Rolls of 1166, has the
same meaning and derivation as the first two elements of the "lost" Raddenbury.”
The other case the migrant case implies a location remote from the occurrence of the name.
This is not just fishing in a larger sea. There are many places beyond Devon, beyond the UK, in German speaking areas,
where a name can be found similar to Rattenbury.
This particular migrant case is romantic and comes from the non-fiction book
Francis Rattenbury and British Columbia
Architecture and Challenge in the Imperial Age
authors
Antony A. Barrett & Rhodri Windsor Liscombe
published by
University of British Columbia Press, Vancouver 1983
ISBN 0-7748-0178-6
Part of Chapter One is devoted to the origin of the
surname.
"The recorded history of the Okehampton Rattenburys began in the
late fifteenth century when a Bavarian lady, who cannot now be identified, came
from her home town of Ratenburg to England to be married into the powerful
Courtenay family, which held the earldom of Devon. She was escorted on her
journey by a leading citizen of the town, Johannes von Ratenburg. So charmed was
he by Devon, that instead of returning to his native Bavaria, he anglicized his
name and settled in the vicinity of Okehampton. Nothing is known of the
subsequent history either of Johannes or of his immediate descendents until one
James Rattenbuey was listed in a charter signed by Henry VII, recognizing the
privileges of certain burghers of Okehampton. In 1620 a visitation of Devon was
conducted, and the diary of John Rattenbury, the incumbent mayor of Okehampton
under Charles I, has survived. Information from these sources amplified by
entries in the parish registers, reveals that by then the family had become
firmly established in the area."
And in the Notes to Chapter One.
"The information on Johannes von Ratenburg was provided by
Katherine Beauman (b.1903), niece of the architect, and is based on documents
acquired by Mrs Beauman in Germany before World War II. The documents have since been destroyed."
The town referred to as Ratenburg is in all likelihood the medieval town of
Rothenburg ob de Tauber. This town is less
important today than in the 15th C. but is far from lost.
An argument for a foreign source is also the sound and spelling with the adjacent letters "nb". This is rare in English words or English place-names. It is common
in German-speaking areas. If you want to search a document or web-page for the name Rattenbury,
the 2-letter combination "nb" is a surprisingly effective search argument.
Migration is an opportunity to modify name. Being rare, even stray Rattenburies
within England led to a change in name for example, the successors of a
Rattenbury who moved from Devon to Durham were called many things but most often
Roddenby.
The persons with this name were mostly illiterate and the spelling was
that chosen by a local official and based on what was heard.
A change of spoken accent can lead to a change in spelling.
It is possible that other English immigrants modified their name to Rattenbury but
even though the 19th C census returns shows many persons with a Rothenburg surname I have not discovered
a new Rattenbury branch that got established from a more recent immigrant.
In the other direction emigration from the UK was common. Most Rattenburies
outside the UK have ancestors originating from England or Wales.
If you have queries or corrections or improvements I would be delighted to hear from you.
Gilbert Rattenbury, Germany.
