Spalding or Spaulding?

Spalding or Spaulding, what's the difference? Well, curiously enough, just an 'u.' In fact, an American/Canadian Spaulding can come directly from parents with the Spalding spelling, as happened in an offshoot of my own line, sharing blood ties with Spalding cousins. The addition of the 'u' in the Spaulding spelling seems just a matter of preference, or dare I say it? Illiteracy.

As to the pre-American history of the Spalding name, it comes from an old Flanders family name. It shows up in a charter from across the pond as early as 716 AD, by King Athelbald to the Crowland Abbey monks. One hundred plus years later, 868 AD, the name would resurface in another charter, where it would be spelled 'Spaldelying.' Roughly two hundred and seventeen years later, the name would be spelled "Spallinge." The first "Spalding" spelling of the family name surfaces in Lincolnshire, the family seat, on land granted by William the Conqueror for assistance at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. In 1273 AD, the first recorded Spalding individual, Ralph de Spalding, surfaces. Later his son, William de Spalding, a wool merchant, would be appointed to Parliament for York by King Edward III in 1327. By 1376, both a William and a John de Spalding were serving in Parliament at Westminster.

Spalding descendants would later migrate to Scotland and central England, eventually covering the globe. The first Spaldings arrived in North America in the 1600's.

Broken into it's parts, ("Yng" Celtic for low meadow-land or marsh; "Ing" Saxon suffix meaning brothers or men of a tribe; "Spald" Latin for shoulder, with "the spalde" being the actual Saxon name of the county) the name at one time literally meant "the tribe at the shoulder of the marsh."

The Spalding coat of arms is blue with three gold buckles. It's crest is a sword pointed upwards. The family motto is: "Hinc mihi salus, " meaning, "Hence comes salvation to me."

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