Bicknell… habitational name from Bickenhill in Warwickshire or Bickenhall in Somerset. Both are named with the Old English personal name Bicca + Old English hyll ‘hill’, but in the Somerset name the final element alternates with Old English h(e)all ‘hall’. variant of Bignell. (Source: Dictionary of American Family Names ©2013, Oxford University Press).
Other sources say that Bicknell is derived from Bickindale… A Bick or a Pick being a carpenter and Dale being a valley. Bicknell: “Carpenter in the Valley”?. So many names are professions (Archer, Abbott, Baker, Baxter, Bishop, Carter, Chandler, Coleman, Cooper, Deacon, Fisher, Foster, Hunter, Tanner, Tailor) that Bick in the Dale sounds pretty likely. Let’s hope that our new research work will show evidence of the initial naming of our family.
How many variations of the spelling of the name have you seen? Clarence Bicknell (1842-1918) made a collection of hundreds of envelopes addressed to him at his home in Bordighera, Italy, with his name incorrectly spelt. Marcus will try to put them in a form to show here. In the meantime feast your eyes on this photo (below) of four of them.
Mentioned in a post of February 2021