IMHO: Caldwell Anglo-Saxon Origins

This article will answer the question why I believe the Scottish surname Caldwell more likely derived from the Old English/Anglo-Saxon words, caeld weille, or caelde waellen, meaning cold water welling from a fissure in the earth, i.e., artesian well, than from the many alternative explanations.
The alternatives include possible derivation from 7th century King Cadwallon of Gwynedd; kald well, Viking/Danish spelling; kaltes quellen, German for cold spring-fed well; Colville, the surname of an early Renfrewshire landholder; keld, the Gaelic word for wood or forest, such that Caldwell with Gaelic input meant well in the wood; the three brother knights named Cauldwell allegedly from Cold Well, France just after the Scottish Reformation; and the legendary Caldwaldi clan of northern Italy fleeing Catholic persecution, probably the most publicized explanation, though not without criticism (see Michael Caldwell's web page at http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Estates/6455/).
I aim to distinguish between probable (evidence from many independent sources is supportive of the conclusion), possible (scintilla of evidence), and conjectural (no known documentary or archeological evidence, but hypothesis has not been disproven.)
I realize that linking Caldwell to some ancient noble, knight, or Protestant refugee from Catholic persecution, is far more socially appealing as well as more marketable. There are for sale Caldwell genealogies, crests and wall plaques attesting to the same but nothing corroborating or publicizing the Anglo-Saxon derivation of the surname, Caldwell. I hope I do not offend or agitate any Romantics or fans of Sir Walter Scott.
Notable among 20th century thinkers who despised Anglo Saxons was H. K. Mencken. He especially ridiculed the Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, and southerners in general.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles are full of stories of poisonings, back-stabbings, dismemberments, and beheadings among their kings. The Anglo-Saxon era is the era of the Dark Ages.
Linking Caldwell to a common place name possibly is resisted by some because the words would be attributed to a people who never fought in the Crusades, were assimilated and subjugated by the Norman invaders, repelled by the tartan-wearing Scottish Highlanders, defeated by King Arthur and his valiant knights, and long considered among the least urbane of the inhabitants of Great Britain. Many Scots and their descendants are proud of their national identity and Scotland's historical achievements, and place far more weight on whatever is uniquely Scottish than what is traceable to earlier times or ancestries, be it Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Irish, or whatever.
I have never been to Scotland. I never looked at the primary documents of Scotland, as did John Caldwell, Barry Robertson, and Thomas Caldwell, in researching the issue. I am neither a genealogist nor certified lineal descendant. So I am not an expert. But this is my story and I am sticking with it.

The Evidence:
1. The Oxford New English Dictionary. 20 volumes thick, with more than 12 pages devoted to the word, well, indicates that the Anglo-Saxon, Old English spelling for cold was caeld, and weille, waelle, or wyllan for well. The early settlers of Great Britain favored locating their dwellings near sources of fresh water, i.e., artesian wells, springs, etc. This leads to a simple explanation why there are so many place names based upon the words, cold well, throughout Great Britain, settled by people totally unrelated to one another, and why attempts to locate the oldest patron father of Caldwells, is doomed to failure, although, ironically, the oldest recorded Caldwell is Adam de Caldwelle, 1195, of the Caldwell hamlet (a few buildings at a crossroad) in present day Derbyshire.
2. The so called distinction between territorial surnames such as Adam de Caldwelle that simply indicate place of residence, and surnames that stayed with the person wherever he moved and passed on generation after generation, is immaterial, when we think of the common man. Virtually no one relocated in the Middle Ages. Hardly anyone ventured more than a day's walk from his birthplace. Successive generations bye and bye, omitted the "of" or "de" and adopted the simple surname Caldwell. When we hear of Jesus of Nazareth, our mind first thinks of the individual, not the location. Similarly with Leonardo da Vinci. I speculate that as kings imposed more frequent poll or individual taxes, briefer listings omitting the "de" or " of" became increasingly favored by clerks just as today there is trend towards national identification numbers in lieu of names. To the government, banks, creditors, and insurers, the search for our identity begins not with a name, but with a 9 digit social security number or 7 digit driver's license number . Only in genealogy pages is more attention paid to the name and spelling than the number.
3. The Celtics and Druids venerated wells for a variety of reasons, and occasionally used some of them for human sacrifice, but there is no archeological evidence of Celtic/Druid sacrifice at or veneration of the Renfrewshire well near Uplawmoor, in what today is known as the hamlet of Caldwell, nor in any of the other Caldwell settlements. I realize absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but I do believe this omission affects the balance on the scale weighing the evidence pro and con.
4. It is far simpler to explain Caldwell as originating from Old English caeld weille as the reason for the wide-spread adoption of this as a place name throughout England and Scotland, than to argue that the wide-spread use of the surname is linked to the arrival of a particular person named Colville, Cauldwell, Calwell, etc., in a particular locality.
5. Occam's Razor. The simplest explanation is usually the correct explanation. I do not mean that this rule be applied mechanically. It simply reflects the notion that more weight should be given to the simpler explanation, in evaluating all of the evidence pro and con.
6. Wherever they occupied lands, the Anglo Saxons usually displaced or dominated the culture and language of the Britons, Celtics, and Gaelic speaking peoples. Virtually all place names in England are of Anglo-Saxon rather than Celtic or Briton origin. I am not sure, but I believe I read somewhere on the internet that is also true of the waterways in Renfrewshire. Between 500 and 1000 A D, the Angles from Kingdoms of Mercia and Northumbria increasingly settled in Scotland, inhabiting new lands as their existing population expanded. For a graphic illustration of this expansion into Renfrewshire, see July/August 2001 issue of the periodical, Archeology, p. 49.\
7. Virtually all of the current place names of England, including many settlements with the place name Caeld weille or variant spelling thereof, were in place before the Norman Invasion of 1086. This works against the notion that the name is linked to the arrival of someone from France, either as a grantee from William Conqueror, or as post-Reformation refugee.
8. There are historical documents showing references to the place name Caldwaellen, 942 AD, in present day Derbyshire, according to Kenneth Cameron, The Place Names of Derbyshire, Cambridge, Eng., Cambridge University Press, 1959, p. 625.
9. The Domesday Book of 1086 constitutes the first census of England. Written in Latin, it describes a hamlet of Caldewelle (today spelled in English, Caldwell) in the southwest region of Derbyshire, within the Repton and Gresly Hundred (an Anglo-Saxon administrative unit that, along with the "shire," survived the Norman Conquest). Domesday Book, English & Latin, text and translation edited by John Morris. Chichester: Phillimore, 1975-1986, vol. 27. "In Caldewelle, Aelferic had 2 c. [caraucates] of and taxable. Land for 2 ploughs. Now in Lordship 1 plough; 6 villagers with 1 plough. Value before 1066 and now, 20 s. King William gave this manor to the monks for his well being." A caraucate is about 120 acres, and was based on the amount of land a team of 8 oxen could plough in a season. The monks to which reference is made were those of Burton Abbey. Burton Abbey was founded as a Benedictine monastery by Wulfuric Spot during the reign of King Æthelred the Unready (978-1016 A.D.).
10. In J.E.B. Glover, A. Mawer and F.M. Stenton, The Place Names of Worcestershire, Vol. IV (English Place Name Society, University of Nottingham, 1927), the authors cite historical documents referring to a Caldan Wyllan, in 972 A.D, renamed as Caldewelle, in 1198 A.D, and most recently known as Caldwall Hall and Caldewell. Wyllan is another Old English word for spring-water or well. Worcestershire was formed as an administrative unit in 1041 after recovery of the Kingdom of Mercia from the Danes.
11. In Nottinghamshire there is a settlement called Caldwell Brook. The earliest historical reference in 1289 refers to this place as Caldewell in the Assize Rolls (stored in the Public Record Office), and later as Coldwell Field, 1609. (John Eric Bruce Glover, Allen Mawer, and F.M. Stenton, The Place Names of Nottinghamshire. Cambridge (Eng.), The University Press, 90, p. 2.)
12. The Domesday Book lists a hamlet of Caldeuuella [lost today] in Birdforth Wapentake, [North Riding, Yorkshire], and another in Gilling West Wapentake located in the Parish of Stanwick Saint John, [North Riding, Yorkshire], still in existence, then spelled Caldewelle, consisting of one manor with 6 ploughs and about 720 acres owned by Thoir at the time of the Conquest of 1066, and transferred by King William to Norman French Count Alan Fergant (Alan the Red).
13. The Domesday Book list several other Caldwell settlements that I will not discuss. All of these settlements are located in regions that were peopled by the Angles and were part of either the Kingdom of Mercia or Northumbria.
14. During the Roman occupation of Great Britain, York was a initially a garrison settlement by which the Romans administered the north of England beginning in the 1st century A.D. In the 2d century, York served three years as the capital of the Roman Empire, while the Emperor Severus resided there and commanded a Roman army that sought to defeat the Celtics. By the 3rd century, York was one of several provincial capitals of England and a thriving cosmopolitan port, with merchants from France (Gaul), Sardinia, and elsewhere. The Roman occupation during the first and second century A.D. extended to the lowlands of present day Scotland. The Romans established a trading post (emporia) at Caruthers (later called Glasgow), a fishing port, not far from the Caldwell hamlet, about 80 A.D.
15. York lies at the southern end of a lowland region (Vale of York) bounded on the east by the coast and the Cleveland Hills and on the west by uplands rising from 600 to more than 3000 feet above sea level. Ermine Street, a Roman road, extended through this lowland region from London north, through York, past Richmond, all the way to Hadrian’s Wall separating England from Scotland. This geography facilitated interaction between the Scots and England’s midlanders. Desirous of selling wool, Scot lowlanders may have driven their sheep from Renfrewshire to York, for export to Europe.
16. The Romans employed Anglo-Saxons as mercenaries to guard their borders from the Pictish and Scottish Highlanders. A Roman fort was built at Lochwinnock, in present day Scotland, and a Roman road runs through the hamlet of Caldwell, near Lochwinnock. This suggests the possibility that the hamlet of Caldwell originated in Roman times.
17. Following the Anglo-Saxon invasion and conversion to Christianity in the 6th century, an Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Church resided at York. The Anglo-Saxons extended their occupation from the Kingdom of Mercia to north of York. The Anglo-Saxons occupied what became known as Northumbria, the northern most region of present day England and southeastern Scotland (Lothian). Edward 'the Elder' defeated the Danes in Northumbria at Tettenhall in 910. After the kings of Strathclyde and the Scots submitted to Edward Old English became increasingly used in the Kingdom of Strathclyde, encompassing Renfrewshire. Edward's heir Athelstan took York from the Danes in 927-8; and required the submission of King Constantine of Scotland. He encouraged town life. Edgar (reigned 959-75), king in Mercia and the Danelaw from 957, fostered monastic revival. The monasteries fostered tenant farming. The early settlers of Lochwinnock included Caldwells who were tenant farmers of Paisley Abbott, as has been confirmed by research done by John Caldwell.
18. The British kingdom of Strathclyde (encompassing Ayr, Renfrew, Lanark, and Galloway) eventually succumbed after the Norman Invasion. The Scottish King David I encouraged Anglo-Saxons with craft skills to migrate to the lowlands. In some areas virtually the only lands that could be bought or sold were in the burghs, encouraging migration to towns and hamlets. Most of the towns founded in the twelfth century were occupied by these Englishmen. They became one of the principal sources of money that King David I needed.
19. After invasion by Danes in the late ninth century, Yorkshire was divided into administrative units called Wapentakes, comparable in area to the Hundreds that served as administrative units elsewhere in England. The Saxon word Wæpen-tac signifies weapon-touch. When a new governor or chief was appointed, all the men of the wapentake were assembled together, and the newly-appointed chief, alighting from his horse, held aloft his spear, which every person present approached and touched with his own weapon, in token of a mutual bond and agreement to stand by one another. The Wapentakes had their separate courts until 1340 A.D., when by a statute passed in the 14th year of Edward III, they were discontinued, and their business transferred to the courts of the shire (e.g., Yorkshire). There are historical records of the Danes changing the names of places within their area of occupation, such as present day Derby and Richmond, but no records of name changes for any of the Caldwell place names. This would be understandable where the orally spoken reference to OE caeld weille or Danish kald well would have the same meaning in Danish and Old English.
20. In 1823, Leland wrote: "There appere ruines of buildinges at Cawdewelle village…Cawdewell is so caullid from a little font or spring, by the ruines of the olde place, and so rennith into a bake halfe a quarter of a mile of." The Oxford English Dictionary has numerous ancient references to the words caeld weille, waelle, and wyllan back to the 12th century. No comparable ancient history is available to bolster the proponents of the alternative explanation for the origin of the name, Caldwell.
21. Baines’s Directory of 1823 does not list anyone with the surname of Caldwell residing in Caldwell, Yorkshire. The inhabitants included 7 farmers, a blacksmith and a liquor merchant. Bulmer's History and Directory of North Yorkshire (1890) lists no Caldwells, but does identify Richard Nicholson as miller and owner of Caldwell mill, and George Walles as owner of Caldwell farm. The absence of Caldwells in York in the 1800's has numerous potential explanations but the most likely is that the last of the male descendants died out, as may have occurred during any of numerous plagues, periods of starvation, or invasion. Whole towns of Yorkshire were repeatedly burned and ravaged by Robert Bruce in the early 1300s and vast regions were depopulated as tenant farmers relocated elsewhere.
22. Former Renfrewshire resident Tom Caldwell has pointed out that the Normans introduced the use of surnames in the 1000's. The first official reference to the practice in Scotland is from a general council held at Forfar in 1061, during the reign of Malcolm Ceannmor (1057- 1093). Malcolm directed his chief subjects to create surnames from the names of their territorial possessions.
23. IMHO (in my humble opinion) this did not mean that the peasant farmer was likewise obligated to adopt surnames as quickly as the nobles and gentry. There may even have been a social unacceptance of surnames among the poor or uneducated. The well-off has long been known to refer to servants, slaves, and underclass only by their given names rather than as Mr. or Sir ---.
24. John Caldwell (o2tan@venicebeach.com) has uncovered numerous references to the name Caldwell in Renfrewshire, especially in and near Lochwinnock, a few miles east of Beith, long before the Reformation, with the earliest document going back to the late 1200's. This region is on the border between present day Ayrshire and Renfrewshire. The earliest reference is in Latin from Monestum de Passelat (Paisley Monastery), 1292, referring to Caldwell. The next record is that of William Caldwell "of
that Ilk" Prebend[ary] of Glasgow 1342 Entry of feu (Exchq. Rolls) Chancellor of Scotland 1350-52. The phrase, of that ilk, implies the presence of a prominent Caldwell family or clan present for a century or more.
25. Surnames were common among Scottish commoners of the 13 century, such as William Wallace, and among nobles, such as Robert Bruce, Andrew Moray, John Soules, etc.. There are over 2000 Scot nobles and gentry listed in the Ragman's Roll of 1296, most with surnames, pledging their allegiance to King Edward I of England, so historical documents make it clear that the use of surnames was well established in Scotland by the 13th century. I wish I knew whether any Caldwells are listed in this document. If so, that would weigh heavily against the notion that the Scottish surname Caldwell derived from the arrival of three brothers Cauldwell to Scotland in the 16th century, as publicized by Mrs. John Q. Anderson, in her Caldwell Workbook, 1966, Virginia State Library System, CS/71/.014/1966.
26. Tom Caldwell uncovered historical documents that revealed use of the Caldwell surname in various parts of Ayrhsire, such as in or near Todriggs, Annanhill, Mauchline, Ayr, Dundonald., Maybole, Kirkoswald and Straiton (sometime known as "of Stratton"), dating back to the 1300's.
27. John Caldwell (o2tan@venicebeach.com) and I have jousted severally times over the origin of the Caldwell surname. John remains erect, like the statute of Robert Bruce mounted on his horse, ready to do battle. In fact, his on-site picture even bears a resemblance to Robert Bruce's facial features. John places no or little weight upon the English documentation of the name Caldwell. He points out that the surname Caldwell was prominent and widespread in Scotland by the 1300s, but not so in England. Virtually all of the Caldwells in North Ireland, America, Australia, and Canada, descended from Scots, especially from Ayshire and Renfrewshire, many of who relocated first to N. Ireland (Donegal, Antrim, Londonderry) and later to America. He says that it would be a stretch to claim that Caldwell derives from English ancestors. Looking at each item of evidence that I have presented, he sees no persuasive or compelling case, just as if he had taken up a piece of puzzle, and said, it shows nothing. My approach has been to see if a clear picture emerges from the totality of the pieces. In my view, the spread of the Caldwell surname throughout the English-speaking world has been one of repeated relocations of successive generations of Caldwells, from England to Scotland, then to North Ireland, and from there, to Canada, America, and Australia. The early Caldwell settlers aimed for New Jersey and Pennsylvania, then spread to North Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas, Ohio, etc. John favors the notion that Caldwell might have derived from the Viking words, kald well. I cannot disprove that assertion. But I find it much less likely than the theory I have advanced, and far better supported by numerous historical documents. 2002 © David Caldwell