ORIGIN AND CHANGES OF SURNAMES.
19
name used by the Roxburghshire and Northumberland families was originally
derived from a place known as Ryedale, and the ears of rye and sheaves of
grain, almost universally found in their coats-of-arms from their earliest his-
tory, should be a sufficient proof, supplemented by the orthography of the name,
without looking any further. In early times there was no established form of
spelling surnames, and those of the same individual are frequently found in old
records in a variety of forms, written undoubtedly according to the fancy of
the recorder, and not by authority of the one who bore the name.
Nearly all branches of the Scottish families have spelt the name "Riddell,"
but there are many old documents on which it is spelled "Riddle" in the Scotch
and English houses; and there have been, and are now, many small branches
in Scotland and England, claiming descent from the Ryedales, who spell their
own names "Riddle"; among them the "Riddles of Troughend," of which the
late Edward Riddle, Master of the Greenwich Naval School, was one.
Many branches settled in the north of Ireland; some from the Roxburgh fam-
ily, some from the Glen-Riddell branch of the same tree; and others evidently
descended from the Riddells of Argyleshire, and many of them spell the name
Riddle, Riddel, Riddall, and Ruddell.
An early offshoot of the Norman Ridels settled in Germany; and their nu-
merous descendants, now scattered over the wide world, spell their names Ridel,
Riedel, Reidel, and Riedell.
One family in the Southern States are descended from emigrants from France,
and in the first generations spelt their names Riddelle. Many of the Scotch-
Irish families came to the United States, and a majority of them now spell
their names Riddle; some Riddile.
A family early settled in Kentucky spelled their surname Ruddle. And de-
scendants of one Virginian branch still spell the name Ruddell, nearly identical
with the Latin forms.
The early New Jersey families were Scottish, and uniformly used the orthog-
raphy Riddell for several generations. But their names on the Colonial records
are frequently spelt Riddle, a name now used by their descendants.
The surname Ridley, or de Ridleigh, like others in this book, has been under
much discussion, and authors of great antiquarian information disagree as to its
derivation. Some look to their ancient coat-of-arms as proof for their claims
that Ridleigh, as the name was spelt in early times, was derived from a place
in Cheshire owned by the ancestors of the family, where reeds grew. The shield
in a coat-of-arms is sometimes called a "field," and as this had an ox passing
through reeds in the arms of Ridleigh, it is said the original form was Reedfield,
"leigh" in the old language meaning a field or meadow. This would seem reason-
able enough if we could find the name spelled Reedfield, or Reedleigh, in any
old document. Does any such proof appear? Another writer gives the same
derivation for the terminal part of the surname, but ascribes another meaning
to the prefix "Rid," which, being sometimes spelled "Red" in old English,
signifies to clear away or make clean; hence, combined with "leigh," would rep-
resent a clean field or cleared land. Nearly all writers have assigned a terri-
torial origin to the surname, but trace it to a source far removed from Ridley
Hall in Cheshire, England. In a biographical notice of Bishop Nicholas Ridley,
in the Parker edition of his writings, it is stated, "the origin of the name Rid-
ley may be traced more satisfactorily than that of many others now equally
illustrious. It appears to have been Scottish, and originally Ridel or Ryedale,
