THE FORDHAM NAME

The Name Fordham, which appears in the Domesday Book of the year 1066, is an Anglo-Saxon name made up of Ford and Ham. It is a Hamlet on a Ford, Hamlet being a cluster of houses and the Ford obviously being a river which could be crossed without use of a boat.

The Census was started after William 1, had conquered England in 1066 and took nearly twenty years to complete. So the Fordham name was in England well before that time. There are three villages named Fordham. The first is near to Colchester,Essex. The second is about a mile due south of downham market Norfolk, and the third in Cambridgeshire and lies between Newmarket to the south and Ely to the north. The Second and Third Fordham Villages are quite close compared to the first, but it is difficult to say which had the greater influence in giving it's name to our ancestors. Perhaps they share equally in this honour.

Surnames did not generally come into existence until about 140 years after Doomsday Book when the French "de" was to be found in our name for example Robert de Fordham, or Robert of Fordham. Eventally the "de" was dropped and spellings changed slighly. For example there were two fs in Fordham, Ffordham up to the eighteenth century after which it all settled down to what we know to-day. There are of course other spellings such as Fordeham, Forden, Fordom and Fordon. The name Fordeham appeared to disappear around 1750, the other four are to be found to a lesser degree up to 1920. It is possible that these four, were just mis-spellings as in those day's not many people could read or write and if they moved out of their county their dialect would influence the way it would be written....