This name is of southern English locational origin from any of the 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 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.