This name is of southern English locational origin from any of several places thus called
including nine in Devonshire alone, four in Somerset, two in Kent and Dorset, and one each in
Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Hertfordshire and Surrey. The one
Buckland in Lincolnshire is an exception to the locational trend. Recorded variously as Bocland 
and Bocheland in the Domesday Book of 1086 for the above group of counties, the name represents the 
Olde English pre 7th Century "boc", a book, plus "land", land i.e. "Bookland", or land held by right 
of a written charter as opposed to "folcland", land held by right of custom from which the king drew
food-rents and customary services. Land could be exempted from these public burdens only by the
grant of a royal charter or "boc". The surname has a very early first recording. On September 
17th 1564 William Buckland and Elizabeth More were married in Feniton, Devonshire, and on May 2nd 
1635 Christopher Buckland, aged 20, was an early emigrant to the New World, settling in the 
Barbados. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Aelfgyth of Boclande, which 
was dated circa 970 - "The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles of Devonshire", during the reign of King Edgar 
the Saxon, 959 - 975. 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.