Stonelake

These are many English place names commencing with the prefix 'Stone'. To these have been added suffix such as 'leah' meaning a farm or enclosure in the forest suitable for agriculture and found in such places as Stoneley in Huntingdon or Stoneleigh in Warwickshire, or in this case the suffix 'lake', Whether the name literally described a stony lake, or belonged to a man called Stone as this word was also used as a personal name in ancient times, is unclear. It is also possible that as no place called Stonelake or indeed anything quite like it, is to be found in any of the known or surviving gazetters of the British Isles, that we are dealing with a 'lost' medieval village of which the surviving surname is the only public memory. It is also possible that the original village name itself has changed out of recognition, or that of the surname. Either are quite possible. Furthermore locational surnames are 'from' names. That is to say names given to people after they left their original village to move somewhere else. In so doing they took, or were given, as their surname the name of their former home. Spelling being at best indifferent, often lead to the development of 'sounds like' spellings. In this case the earliest recording that we have is that of John Stonelacke at St Dunstans in the East, Stepney, city of London, on October11th 1649. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.