The surname DIBBLE originated in medieval times in England for better identification of each individual.
Prior to that time a person was known only by the single name which was given at birth.
Later it became necessary to distinguish one man named John or Thomas from others
with the same name so a descriptive word would be given to each individual.
There were four major sources from which these additional names arose:
a person's occupation, a location, a descriptive nickname, and baptismal from the name of the father.
Of these, the name Dibble began as a baptismal name and was used to further identify one who
descended from Dibb, from Dibald or Theobald (people, bold).
In the beginning, the name Dibble belonged only to the person it described.
Generations later it became hereditary and was passed down from a father to his children
to become their family name. Like most names, Dibble has undergone some spelling changes since it originated.
The name Dibble was likely to be written down and spelled as to what the writer thought he heard
with the various accents of the times like Dible, Dibel, Dibell, Deeble, Dybol, Dibbs, Dibbles, etc.
The Dibble name may even be spelled like Thibodeau or Thibault (French) in other countries.
Genealogy research found the earliest "Dibble" ancestors originating from Somerset, England in the early 1500s.
Other ancestors spelled Deeble or Deble may have come from St. Germains, Cornwall, England in the late 1400s.
There were many families with the Dibble surname located in different towns within the county of Somerset,
which is located in southwest England. Unless a Dibble individual was a prominent person or a criminal
the only mark he was likely to leave for posterity was the supposedly compulsory record of his baptism,
marriage or burial written in a church register by the incumbent of the local parish church or his clerk.
There were a very large number of parishes in Somerset but only about half of them had church registers
prior to dates we may be researching and many have huge gaps of missing records.
Only some of these records actually survived the church fires and various wars.
It was an age of successive outbreaks of plague, famine, war, iconoclasm and sackings of clergy,
and many church records were lost forever.
It is very rare indeed to be able to follow any Dibble individual through baptism,
marriage and burial in the church registers. It is nearly impossible to be convinced that a Dibble baptism
followed by a Dibble marriage about 25 years later refers to the same Dibble individual.
After researching most of the church records, wills and other written documents available
we have not found the missing link to who might be the "original Dibble".
The internet and email has helped all genealogy researchers worldwide combine their efforts
only to find the same dead end - incomplete and missing records.
Genealogy research has proven that there were many Dibble families in southwest England.
One can only guess that the surname Dibble had been used there for quite some time
and that we were much more likely to have descended from Saxons than from French immigrants.
So even though we have not identified the original Dibble, where he was born, married or died,
we do know that if we search far enough back in time we will find that we are all related.
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