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Godhere

Discussion of the name

Godhere is a masculine name of uncertain language but comprising elements corresponding to Old English god ‘god’ or gōd ‘good’ and  here ‘troop, army, host’.  Von Feilitzen (1937: 264) preferred to interpret Godhere as an Old English formation, but Forssner (1919: 119-20) considered that its late appearance in pre-Conquest England rendered a Continental Germanic origin more likely.  Forssner may have been overly influenced by the instances of moneyers, however, whereas the social range of occurrences noted in the PASE corpus (below) renders von Feilitzen’s interpretation the more likely.

There are 11 entries in the PASE corpus, of which Godhere 1-4 (of whom Godhere 1 was a land-owner and Godhere 2 a slave) occur between the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, Godhere 5 is a catch-all for occurrences in DB and Godhere 6-11 represent moneyers active at various mints between 997 and 1056.  It is notable that all of these occurrences except for Godhere 10 (a moneyer at Shrewsbury, 1036-8) have a distribution that does not extend to the west of Hertfordshire or to the south of London.

Bibliography

Forssner 1916: Thorvald Forssner, Continental-Germanic Personal Names in England in Old and Middle English Times (Uppsala, 1916)

von Feilitzen 1937: Olof von Feilitzen, The Pre-Conquest Personal Names of Domesday Book, Nomina Germanica 3 (Uppsala: Almqvist and Wiksells, 1937)

Forms of the name

Spellings in Domesday Book: Godere, Goderus

Spellings in IE: ~, Goda

Forms in modern scholarship:

  von Feilitzen head forms: Godhere

  Phillimore edition: Godhere

  Alecto edition: Godhere

Distribution map of property and lordships associated with this name in DB

List of property and lordships associated with this name in DB

Holder 1066

Shire	Phil. ref.	Vill	DB Spelling	Holder 1066	Lord 1066	Tenant-in-Chief 1086	1086 Subtenant	Fiscal Value	1066 Value	1086 Value	Conf.	Show on Map
Shire Essex	Phil. ref. 4,17	Vill Ulehams	DB Spelling Goderus	Holder 1066 Godhere 'of Ulehams'	Lord 1066 -	Tenant-in-Chief 1086 Maurice, bishop of London	1086 Subtenant Hugh de Bernières	Fiscal Value 2.17	1066 Value 3.00	1086 Value 2.00	Confidence B	Map
Shire Essex	Phil. ref. 66,2	Vill Shalford	DB Spelling Godere	Holder 1066 Godhere 'of Ulehams'	Lord 1066 -	Tenant-in-Chief 1086 William the deacon	1086 Subtenant -	Fiscal Value 0.50	1066 Value 2.00	1086 Value 2.50	Confidence D	Map
Shire Suffolk	Phil. ref. 8,4	Vill Tuddenham	DB Spelling Godere	Holder 1066 Godhere 'of Tuddenham'	Lord 1066 Wulfric, abbot of Ely	Tenant-in-Chief 1086 Roger the Poitevin	1086 Subtenant -	Fiscal Value 0.57	1066 Value 1.25	1086 Value 1.25	Confidence E	Map
Totals								Fiscal Value	1066 Value	1086 Value

People of this name

• Godhere 12 - Godhere ‘of Ulehams’ (Essex), fl. 1066
• Godhere 13 - Godhere ‘of Tuddenham’ (Suff.), fl. 1066