ABSTRACT
One question which is often raised in connection with the history of surnames is whether all the bearers of one particular surname are ultimately related, and can all trace their descent back to some common ancestor living in the distant past, perhaps in the twelth or thirteenth century, when many surnames originated. This is obviously a matter of interest and importance to people tracing their own pedigrees, or the history of their families. In Oxfordshire, the surname Lardiner seems to have originated with a single family, resident at Oxford in the fourteenth century. It had become relatively numerous in the county by about 1600, and survives there to the present. Some occupational surnames have for long been both numerous and widely distributed and the same is true of some surnames derived from personal names in general use. There are very few topographical surnames which seem likely to have been at first those of single families.
