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"Wood" and "Woods" are English surnames meaning
"dweller in the woods." The name was
especially
common in Yorkshire, Cheshire, Derbyshire, Notts,
Staffordshire, Leicestershire, Kent, and Sussex.
The spelling of the name stabilized in approximately
the 15th century, but the name has been around
in one
form or another for much longer. 13th and
14th century records mention "de la Wode," "del
Woode,"
"at Wode," and "del Wood." The roots of
the name go back even much farther, though. Woden
(or
Odin) was the main god of the ancient Britons
who lived in England at the time of the Roman
conquest prior to
the birth of Jesus. Woden lived
in the heavens but was thought to manifiest himself
in trees, particularly old,
large oak trees. The
ancient Britons painted themselves in blue (wode),
the sacred color of Woden and worshipped
at the
sacred oak trees in pagan rites of the Druid
religion. This info is taken from the Wood Family
History,
a book published in 1973 by the American
Genealogical Research Institute.
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