This interesting surname is of Anglo-Saxon origin, and is a locational name from some minor or unrecorded place, perhaps a "lost" village. There are an estimated seven to ten thousand villages and hamlets that have now disappeared from Britain since the 12th Century; the prime cause of these "disappearances" was the enforced "clearing" and dispersal of the former inhabitants to make way for sheep pastures at the height of the wool-trade in the 15th Century, and natural causes such as the Black Death of 1348, in which an eighth of the population perished. The original place is believed to have been in the Bedfordshire-London area, and the derivation is the Olde English pre 7th Century personal name "Tathere" (also found in such placenames as Tatterford, Tattersett and Tattershall), and "tun", fence, enclosure; hence, "Tathere's enclosure". In the modern idiom the surname can be found as Tetterton, Titterton, Tutherton, Tetharton, Totherton and Tatterton. Recordings of the surname from English Church Registers include: the christening of William Teatherton on April 10th 1567, at St. Paul's, Bedford; the christening of Robert, son of John and Margerett Tatterton, on December 26th 1680, at St. Botolph without Aldersgate, London; and the christening of Henry, son of Henry Tatterton, on August 18th 1684, at Shillington, Bedford. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Alyce Tytherton, which was dated September 30th 1550, marriage to Robert A. Moore, at St. Margaret's, Westminster, London, during the reign of King Edward V1, known as "The Boy King", 1547 - 1553. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was known as Poll Tax. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.

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