Bowden Family History

English: habitational name from any of several places called Bowden or Bowdon. Bowden in Devon and Derbyshire and Bowdon in Cheshire are named with Old English boga ‘bow’ + dūn ‘hill’ i.e. ‘hill shaped like a bow’; one in Leicestershire (Bugedone in Domesday Book) comes according to Ekwall from the Old English personal name Būga (masculine) or Bucge (feminine) + dūn.

There are also Scottish places of this name but there are comparatively few bearers of the surname Bowden north of the border. In England the surname is found most frequently in Lancashire and in the West Country. In Devon and Cornwall there has been some confusion with the Norman personal name Baldwin.

English: topographic name for someone who lived at the top of a hill from Middle English buve dun ‘above the hill’ (Old English būfan dūne as in the placename Bowden, Wiltshire).

Scottish: habitational name from Bowden in Roxburghshire named from Old English bōthl ‘dwelling-house’ + Old English denu ‘valley’.

Irish: Anglicized form of Gaelic Ó Buadáin ‘descendant of Buadán’ an Old Irish personal name of uncertain etymology. English: variant of Bawden.