Tapscott Name

What's in a Name?

What's in a name? That which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet.

~William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

The Tapscott name and its variations first appear in the middle 1500s, almost fifty years before Will S. wrote his famous lines. The earliest Tapscott records are found in Southwest England, the “West Country,” which encompasses the counties of Somerset, Devon, Dorset, Wiltshire, and Cornwall, and the City and County of Bristol. The name emerged shortly after 1538, when Thomas Cromwell, the Vicar General under Henry VIII, decreed that Anglican clergy should record in a book all christenings, marriages, and burials for the preceding week after each Sunday service in the presence of the churchwardens. Before then the few records made were written on loose sheets, which were almost always lost.

The second syllable of “Tapscott” almost certainly comes from Old English (OE) “cott” (related to Old Norse “kot”), meaning a small hut. From this origin come the words “cottage” and “cot.” Early English place names with the suffix “cott” were attached to humble settlements, often small farmsteads, and were frequently compounded with a personal name, probably that of an early tenant. “Tapp” is a county name, originally found almost solely in Devon and Somerset. The standard singular OE possessive ending was usually “s” or “es” (no apostrophe). Eventually the location of Tapp’s cottage or farmstead (“Tapps cott”) would become known as “Tappscott,” and names such as “William of Tappscott” would become “William Tappscott,” an early variant.

Today, no place name in the Somerset/Devon area remotely resembles the name “Tappscott,” other than Tippacott (near Lynton at the far west side of Exmoor) and Tascott, both in Devon. The latter neighborhood, which is occasionally listed with North Petherwin near the Cornwall border, is named after a local family rather than the converse. Any “Tappscott” settlement has disappeared in the mists of time. “Tapps,” a manor of Baldwin de Brionne in Devon, is listed in the Domesday Book, compiled in 1086, and a cottage, farmstead, or small settlement associated with this manor could have become a place name source for “Tapscott,” though there is no evidence of this.

Many West Country names have derivations similar to that described here—”Nethercot” (lower cottage/farm, from OE “nether”), “Westcott” (west), “Estcott” (or “Estcot,” east), “Prescott” (priest, from OE “prēost”), “Woolcott” (or “Wolcott,” stream, from Middle English “wolle”), and “Chilcott” (from the OE name “Ceola”). A common name source, however, does not necessarily mean a common bloodline. Unrelated persons may have been associated with a settlement, farm, or cottage known as “Tappscott,” and more than one location may have had this designation. Nevertheless, the Tapscott name arose in a limited area, for relatively few individuals, who may have been related.